Fire Warrior Rekindled
by jcdenton2012
Summary: Shas' la T'au Kais is a broken Fire Warrior whose mind barely clings to sanity. Abandoned within a medical institution upon T'ros… he forever relives the horrors of Dolumar IV while confined to an insanity ward. Unfortunately, T'ros is about to be attacked… or is it?
1. Dreams of Blood and Gore

He could smell it, always lingering the background, a stench of smoke and blood and tainted meat. Whispers, like scratching against his mind, always ebbing away at his sanity. Nobody else could hear them, those things trying to get in, always there, always speaking in whispers like nails on a chalkboard. His hands ached as his wrists flexed against the restraint bindings to his bed. How long had he been here, he wondered? He was alone. He had been alone for a long time. Always alone. Always… he was going to die alone, and nobody cared.

He blinked his eyes. The world turned red and he was standing in a primitive Gue'la masonry chamber with a lumbering monster, a Vash'aun'an screeching in anger as it ascended from a well of dark and terrible power. It was massive, a form of red static electricity being emitted from its glowing body. Pink, its flesh was pink, formed from raw energy radiating like a harsh stinking heat, like a fountain of raw primal power, as it slowly marched forward towards him.

He blinked again, sweat pouring from his brow. His body ached, his skin sticky as it stuck his flesh to the clothe bedding. Something was wrong. He could feel it in his bones. The room was white, pure white, perfectly white. Everything shined with flawless perfection provoking a false sense of safety, but the whispering was there, loud in his ears, yelling at him, mocking him.

He blinked, the Vash'aun'an [demon] swung a massive red axe at his prone body. He rolled and dodged, his left leg nothing more than an aching mash of decomposing flesh rendered into paste. The monster was back upon him, swinging that massive axe to cleave him in two while unleashing a maniacal laugh at the mere mortal's expense.

He blinked, his wrists pulling at the blinding's, veins bulging against his blue skin. The whispering was practically yelling in his ears. The lights were glowing, brighter, brighter, everything was turning white. A white froth of spittle foamed on his lips as a voice echoed within his twilight moments of consciousness, "Easy, easy… you're having another episode. Kais… Kais… it's not real… None of it is real!"

But it was real. It had happened, and as the fallen Fire Warrior fell into the drug induced darkness he spoke those words in a whisper, a faint whisper which no one else could hear, "Rip and tare. Rip and tare."

….

Did he even have a name? A purpose? What was a Tau without those two things? He lived, he breathed, but he was a mere shadow, broken, a mere cheap parody of his kind. There was no place for him. There were just the whispers, mocking him, in the shadows of his mind. He could hear them now, the scratching at the boundary of his sanity. If he could reach out with his bound hands, he could swear that he could touch them, like a puddle of water just inches away from his face. This… was annoying.

The room shook with an explosive thud. Was this real, or was this yet another illusion? He had been the victim of so many waking dreams, of monsters, of death and blood, only to find himself always in this bed soiled in sweat. He wasn't well mentally, and he knew he never would be. He had seen too much. Odd that he didn't feel bad about any of his actions. In fact, he didn't feel anything at all. He was… hallow on the inside, blank, numb, ambivalent.

There was another quake. This time the lights in his pristine white room blinked on and off. The shadows closed in around him, ghosts, voices, shrouds which were once people pressed against the glass viewing window to his cell. He could see them, faces pushed flush against the panels, screaming, screeching in agony, leaving black bloody finger prints as they tried to claw their way in.

He pulled against his restraints. The lights dimmed again from another explosive thud. More of them were now pressing against the glass cracking it. They screamed for his soul. He pulled against his restraints with all his might, veins pulsing against his neck as sweat trickled down his back.

This wasn't real. It couldn't be real. Then again it was real on Dolumar IV, and the scratching, the scratching was there. They were trying to get in. Always trying to get in. He was damaged, broken, and they had a way in.

Blood started to creep down his wrists as the restraints bit into his flesh. The lights flashed off.

He could hear his breathing, harsh, desperate, catching in his lungs. He could feel the cold, the sweat on his skin turned to ice crisping his flesh. The lights didn't come back on, but he could see it, the face of his father emerging from the darkness inches away from his face. It looked in the eyes with two black orbs, his lined face aged and passive.

He couldn't speak. What was this? And when his father at last uttered those words, as his face distorted unnaturally with an unhinged jaw revealing a throat of nothing but darkness, "Rip and tare. Rip and tare."

…..

Shas' la T'au Kais felt his skin prickle as the lights came back on. The things which were pressing against the glass, the ghosts, were gone leaving their blackened fingerprints and fractured spider webbing from which they had tried to invade their way in. He was safe. It had been real. Real? Kais wasn't sure if he even knew what real was anymore.

He deeply inhaled and slowly exhaled, his breath forming a mist in the crisp and cold room. His hands pulled against his… they were free. His restraints had been cut loose. But, his father? No, that wasn't his father because his father was dead. Yet he wondered, why was he free? There was no answer. Then again, did it really matter? No, Kais supposed that it didn't because at this very moment the only thing which mattered was escaping those things before they came back. Before they got him and tore him into pieces' soul and all.

Slowly, Kais sat up in his bed and massaged the wounds on his wrists from his earlier attempts to free as those things had encroached upon his cell for the kll. Had his father, or the thing which wore his father's face done this? If so, then why?

Questions, he only had questions. With care, he reached forward and started to unravel the restraints to his legs. Well, more to the point, his one flesh and blood leg, and one robotic prosthetic. The prosthetic had been given to him as a replacement following the events on Dolumar IV. It was the rot of flesh and bone from alien disease which had gone untreated. That was why it had been amputated. Secretly, Kais laminated the loss of his limb. The replacement felt cold… alien, against his flesh. It was a feeling of wrongness.

Or so he thought as his heels pressed against the floor. One step at a time upon legs which hadn't stood upon land in months. His muscles felt like jelly, and he struggled to maintain a sense of balance as he limped across his cell and pressed against the door.

He felt his arms quiver as he tried to lever the door open with his numb finger tips. It was no use as he fumbled weakly against the pressure seal, the weight of his body eventually fumbling awkwardly in the wrong direction as his numb legs caved out from under him.

Kais slid against the pressure door to his cell. His hands feebly sliding against the glass with a squeal as he sat upon the floor, his back against the glass and steel. With a gasp, he felt his lungs burn with cold crisp air. Something was wrong, something was…

He suddenly retched forward on his palms spasming a mucus of blue and purple fluids upon the floor. It came out of his stomach, lungs, and the mucus lining within is mouth. Some of it lingered as spittle from his mouth as he once more deeply inhaled, his head throbbing with pain. The whispering was there, he could still hear it, drawing his attention from the rancid smelling medical fluids upon the floor. He glared up, and he saw… his father, the ghost of his father walking away down a nearby hallway.

Disoriented, his back covered in a cold sweat, Kais slowly forced himself onto his hooves and leaned with his shoulder against the glass paneling adjoining the door. He glared sickly at the locking mechanism and fumbled with his fingers to pry open the digital controls pressed into the containment seal. Kais was no Earth Caste Engineer, but he could make an educated guess as to the workings of the security lock. His fingers felt numb as he ran them along thin wires, deducing basic purposes. He coughed at the dry sour bile in his parched throat and pulled at several small wires in the locking mechanism. The doors locking system sparked several small embers of yellow light and he heard the pressure seal disengage. Once more, Kais put his weight against the door, his numb fingers pressing against the edges, and then he pushed it open.

He edged out into the hallway, noticing all the black muddy footprints, some hooves some apish upon the floor. He leaned against the wall and used it for support, his head swimming with disorientation. It was quiet, too quiet. Where were all the Earth and Water Caste personal responsible for the medical patients? Slowly, he came to a three-way junction in the hallway.

Kais glanced around both corners and noticed the ghost of his father walking around another corner. Grimacing, he marched on until at last ending up in a large empty gallery of perfect white beds. Nothing was out of place, pristine, flawless, and in the center of his room, waiting with folded arms, was his grimacing father.

The broken fire warrior pushed off the wall and upon numb legs approached the ghost of his father in the center of the room. They came face to face with one man showing nothing but contempt upon his face, and the other, his son nothing but unbearable sickness.

It was now that his father uncrossed his arms and presented Kais with something. It was a holodisk, the holodisk of his youth, cracked and broken, still displaying those words. Kais took the small token and read it aloud,

 _My son,_

 _No expansion without equilibrium._

 _No conquest without control._

 _Pursue success in serenity_

 _And service to the tau'va._

 _With pride._

 _Shas'o T'au Shi'ur_

Then, his father disappeared, and for the first time since escaping his cell Kais noticed all the Tau corpses covered in green scabs, blood, gore, and the battle worn sundered ruins of the hospital. In that moment, he felt nothing. Well, that isn't exactly true… he felt laughter swelling in his lungs. Laughter born from unspeakable pain. Laughter… heard from a madman about to go to war.

…

When they first came, they attacked him from behind. Kais calmly delayed looking over his shoulder at their tiresome moans, as things… dead-things, shuffled across the floor like sickly infants. He could smell the rotting festering taint sticking to their green rancid flesh, that smell of spoiled meat and decay. He could feel it in his gut, down to the bones… like a sickness of the soul.

The Fire Warrior turned around to see the twitching shambling corpses of those broken and dead Tau dragging the diseased remains of their shambling corpses across the floor in limping gaits, he smiled. This was real. They were real. He wasn't insane. Oh no, he was far from insane.

The first broken dead-thing came at him in a lurch, in an attempt to clamp down upon the fevered Fire Warriors exposed shoulder with an open mouth of drooling fanged teeth. The wretched dead-thing would have succeeded had it attacked a far less… prepared enemy. Unfortunately, for this dead-thing, Kais wasn't normal. He was the furthest thing from normal. So, when the Tau Fire Warrior slammed his fist into the maul of the dead-thing throwing it against a nearby bed with a sickening snap you can imagine how happy the Fire Warrior was. After so much time in isolation dealing with things which were unreal, those rancid illusions of monsters, at last he was confronted with horrors he could lay his hands upon. They were real again. He could kill them. He had to kill them.

With a limp upon a numb leg and unused prosthetic, the broken fire warrior crossed the room with those shambling things lingering behind him. He reached for a shelf of surgical tools, inadvertently throwing most of the contents unto the floor as he fumbling for something he could use. His hands danced over the numerous assortment of useless clutter, eventually grabbing a laser scalpel. He turned around, thumbing the activation rune upon the tool, just as the second dead-thang lunged at him.

Kais knew what he was doing, grabbing the dead-thing by the neck, using the lumbering corpses momentum to switch places and push the dead-thing against a poorly kept blood smeared bed. He took the laser scalpel and stabbed it like a dagger into the corpses eye socket, "Die!" he yelled with a grimace as he stabbed again and again and again until the head of the walking Tau corpse was nothing but a blue bloody stump.

Blue blood smeared his white clothes, and he wiped the corpses brain matter from his face with a tattered sleeve as the other dead-things slowly crept up from behind. Calmly, he pushed the rotting corpse he had just silenced away, watching as it thumped lifelessly upon the blood-stained floor with a thud. He turned, eager, stepping forward to attack one of the remaining dead-things.

His scalpel was like a paint brush as he sliced open the next dead-things throat. With a gurgle of coagulated blood the Tau dead-thing fumbled backwards without turning over until Kais kicked it in the sternum with his prosthetic forcing it to crumble, sitting unto it's chest with his thighs splayed against the dead-things ribs. He used his fist, punching again and again, barbarity, it was pure barbarity, but it felt sooo good. He continued punching the dead thing until it's head was a gory stump and it stopped moving.

Then he stood up, smiling, and approached the last dead-thing. Lifeless, the final Tau lurched towards him like a drone. Then something changed. The room seemed to spin, his mind whirled, and he was standing in a room of screaming orderlies. Living breathing Tau dressed in white bodygloves. Surrounding him, screaming in anger and fear as he stood over the dead bodies of two innocent men, his hands coated in blue blood.

He didn't feel anything. There was no pity. There was no remorse. This wasn't real. Oh no, the dead-things were real. He knew they were real. He had seen them. He had touched them. He turned towards the screaming Tau orderly who just prior had been a shambling living corpse, and grinned. Once more it became a dead-thing as reality phased from an illusion to someone far more real. The man screaming at him in fear once more became another dead-thing. It attacked him. He killed it, bashed its head in like a melon, laughing the entire time. He enjoyed it. The feeling of the rotting brain matter between his fingers.

The whispers were at the back of his mind, scrapping against his sanity. He could feel his head throbbing, almost like something was trying to escape. Kais knew better, it wasn't something trying to escape. It was something trying to get in.

With a sweat stained body the former Tau Fire Warrior stood to his feet and scuttled away down a nearby hallway lined with blood stains and strafed rifle fire. Everyone was dead, dead or worse. He saw more walking corpses scrapping against a blood smeared doorway. One of them noticed him and broke away to attack.

Kais grabbed the dead-thing by the head and slammed his melon against the wall with a wet smack. Brains and blood splattered upon his chest as the corpse fell lifeless once more upon the ground. Two more broke away from the door to attack him. He slashed the first in the neck in four quick hand gestures until it was decapitation. Then, in once quick fluid motion, he grabbed the head and used it as a projectile causing the second dead-thing to fall to the ground as it was struck in the sternum by the severed head of its compatriot. Before the corpse could arise once more, he stood above it and used his hove as a bludgeon to smash the skull into paste.

The last dead-thing looked at him, and in two quick lurches attacked with a gaping maw of sharpened teeth. Kais grabbed the corpse by the arm, and used its own momentum against it, throwing the dead-thing against the wall with a wet smack. Then he took the laser scalpel and stabbed down ripping a long gash along the length of the spin before smashing its forehead against the wall again and again until it stopped moving.

Kais looked at the rotting corpses and his own handy work. It was good work. He felt proud of it. Smiling, he approached the closed door and looked through the glass window. In front of him, on the other side, was a… no… that wasn't possible. It couldn't be.

"You have to wake up blue skin. None of this is real." Said the blue armored space marine. It was him, the one called Captain Jehnnus Ardias of the Ultramarines. But, that wasn't possible. How was he here? How was he behind that door?

"No," said Kais while backing away from the door. Something was wrong, something was terribly wrong. This was real wasn't it? He could feel the blood and broken flesh upon his fingers, the prosthetic leg upon his knee. This was real. It had to be real, but… this Gue'la shouldn't be here. And then, everything went dark. The lights were gone leaving Kais with the sharp wisps of air in his lungs and the whispers in his mind.

"Rip and tare!" screamed a voice at the reaches of his mind. He perceived the words being echoed by hundreds, thousands, millions of voices. It was like white noise, the screeching and screaming woes which forced him to his knees. Kais screamed to himself as he covered the sides of his hearing ducts to blot out the noise, "Rip and tare!" Rip and tare! Rip and tare!"

Then, something gave. Something… got in.


	2. Kais Awakens

"You ain't got no spine boy… Fragn' blue-turd alien-scum," said Guardsman Humbert of the Shiloh 589 Light Drop, as he kicked the drooling blue skin in the ribs, throwing the xeno's limp body against the pristine white wall of the captured xeno's medical center. This was the fourth day of the imperial invasion of this here Tau world, and the limp dick aliens infesting the planets largest continental landmass sure packed up in a hurry once the 589th rolled into their little pansy-ass hab city, hooorah! This place, this hospital, it weren't but a building filled with bleedn' heart liberals. Once the 589th showed up for a little bit of combat recon most of the staff cut bait and ran. Those who stayed behind were being rounded up for a good old fashioned who-dinger!

The guardsman in his black leather body webbing, green combat fatigues, and red checkered flannel shirt customary of the 589th watched the little blue skinned short-stock man slide down the side of the wall without so much as a word while the human warrior spat a glob of green to'bac unto the floor, "Fragn' fifthly alien-trash. Should-a burned this here planet to ash and fragn' shit on your bleached bones because da Emperor hates anything not human. Alien wildlife. Alien plants, and god-durn blue-skins who gone mute!"

Another guardsman stood nearby in the doorway, "What-chu doin' Humbert. You got yourself a liv-y there? Whoo-e, looks like we gonna have-us some fun on da' bun! Let me go get Berny and we can roast the son'o bitch with a flamer I tell you what."

Humbart pointed towards the other guardsman with an accusing finger, and turned his back upon the blue skinned freak lying motionless upon the floor, "Don't you' be doin' nothin' without my say so, you yellow back miser." The two-lunatic guardsman continued to bicker back and forth as the Tau laying upon the floor opened and closed the fingers to his left hand resting mere inches away before his glassed over opened eyes. They were numb, his entire body was numb, but he could still feel it… the warmth of the room ebbing into his aching dry flesh.

He had let it in. The voices, he had let them in. No, that wasn't quite right. He could still hear them in the background, far away, at the borders of his perception. The eternal scratching, whispers, things he could just barely make out but which seemed to disappear as he reached out with his mind to understand them. These Gue'la were different. He had let THEM in by mistake. He had let the 'real' in? This, this… was real, wasn't it? Then everything else which had happened just prior with the walking shambling corpses of long dead Tau was just a, a what… some sort of elaborate fantasy? It had felt so real at the time, but now… now things had changed. He could feel his skin, the heat, the stench.

"What-choo think'n Tovy! This some sort of one dem' their democracy's? We ain't on Shiloh no more. We in da Guard now boy. Now we can go do us some proper killin' of these here alien turds for throne and race, and ain't nobody gonna have a problm' with that."

There were two of them, Guardsman of the Corpse Emperor laughing in the background, identically dressed. Kais could hear them, but he was trapped. Move! Move damn you! His body wouldn't move, just his hand, flexing the fingers one slow grasp at a time as the whispers scratched at the edge of his mind. The chanting was there, always there. He could still hear it. 'Rip and tear. Rip and tare,' like wisps on the wind.

"Woo-e, look-y what I found here boys'" yelled another guardsman coming in from the side. He was dragging a Tau nurse by the scruff of her neck collar, her legs shot and gored dragging beneath her blood smeared white bodyglove. Kais could see her out of the corner of his eye, the vita streaking behind her body upon the floor as she sobbed. And the third guardsman? Kais could see him as well, just barely out of the corner of his peripheral vision, yet… nothing would move. It was infuriating being trapped within his own body. The only thing Kais could do was watch the deranged humans as they threw the nurse face first against the empty hospital bed before his very eyes.

"What-chu thinkn' Sarge?" said one of the Gue'la, a man with a short mustache and boonie hat. The latter of which having odd insignia stenciled upon it. From Kais's perspective, the symbol was sort of red flag crossed with two blue stripes which in turn were filled with shite stars. This human, the one with the strange hat, was speaking to the taller more muscular man dressed similarly who had arrived with the nurse. Kais watched this domineering human lean over the wounded Tau medic, his right arm wielding a combat talon against her throat.

"I'm a'think' we show her a good ol' time boys," he replied while pulling a shock maul from a side holster, thumbing a rune on its side to ignite its high-powered electrical charge. The fire warrior watched the Gue'la sergeant grin wickedly and lick the nurse's exposed neck. She sobbed and tried to break away in disgust.

"You a xeno lover sarge?" laughed one of the troopers, a younger man with a shaved head. The bearded commander instantly went red faced in anger, "I ain't no xeno lover! I just believe in showin' these here blue skins their place. So, here's what I'm gonna do boys… I'm gonna beat the blue off this here freak. Then we gonna skin her and lynch her corpse up for everyone to take a gander."

The Tau nurse started to beg, and then the Gue'la sergeant looked at Kais, "What-choo look'n at boy'?"

Kais remained trapped, unable to move, but he could still hear the scratching at the edge of his mind. The whispers were there, nudging him along, 'Rip and tear. Rip and tear.' "You better speak up you blue skinned turd because I ain't a'taken none of your stink eye, and I sure as throne ain't gonna ask you again boy.''"

"Oh come on Sarge. That one there is defective. He like a sack of shit," said the younger guardsman with a shaved head. His commander ignored the runt in the group, pushed off the Tau nurse, knelt before the Fire Warrior, and put his combat knife in Kais's vision.

The voices grew in strength. The broken Tau fire warrior could see the grizzled guardsman before his fuzzy eyes, smell his bitter acidic stench of chewed chemical herbs. Kais's vision started to flash red, his strength returning. He could feel it. The anger, the hate, it was giving him power. 'Rip and tare. Rip and tare. RIP AND TEAR!'

….

"Sarge, I told you… this one here is a retar…" the young shaved headed guardsman blanched as his momentarily distracted commander turned his head exposing his unprotected neck muscles. In that instant, the blue skin jerked to life, leaping off the floor like some sort of possessed corpse, sinking his teeth into his commander's neck. It happened in a split second. The blue skins attack bit deep, sinking into flesh, and cutting the carotid artery. Red blood erupted like a split watermain into the air, and in that one unprepared second the surviving troopers failed to act.

….

Kais swallowed a huge chunk of the human's flesh, cast the surprised man aside as blood fountained into the air, and yelled in triumph. In one fluid motion, he grabbed the combat talon from the human's feeble fingers and ran at the nearest surviving trooper who was unfortunately far to dazed to properly respond. The second man had just enough sense to start raising his lasrifle before the Tau warrior was upon him. Those precious wasted seconds sealed the troopers fate as Kais, leering on his augmented leg, jammed the knife up into the Gue'la's crotch, twisting it with all his strength.

He unleashed a war cry into the human's face, stabbing again and again into the man's crotch until the pink skins mangled intestine spilled out onto the floor. The shaved headed youth, the last guardsman still not maimed, turned and fled, "Saint Invictus, it's a frag'n monster!" he yelled.

Kais grinned wickedly and grabbed the castrated guardsman's lasrifle as he crumpled over in a scream of agony. With ease and perhaps some callousness, he shot the human youth in the back as he ran away like a coward, watching with glee as the man crumbled over with a lifeless thud at twenty paces. Kais then held the lasrifle with one hand and pointed it in the wounded surviving troopers face to whom he had just inflicted a most foul wound. The Gue'la contorted his checks to spit upon his butcher, but Kais didn't give the human a chance. With a single shot, the fire warrior blew the man's head off without a second thought, decorating the corridor floor in steaming brain matter.

Kais stood there, emotionless, cold on the inside as he took in the mangled remains of the three dead Gue'la troopers. His clothes were covered in red blood. Yet, he felt nothing. There was no shame, no anger, just… the calm. This baffled the Fire Warrior. Surely, yes, he should definitely be feeling something else. The way he had just butchered these three men was barbaric, very much un-Tau behavior, and his after thoughts felt distanced from the grimness of his reality. Yet, he felt nothing. Not even an inkling of self-doubt.

When Kais turned towards the wounded nurse lying backwards upon his isolation bed with her tattered legs it was with a sense of serenity at odds with his physical appearance. The woman, despite her pain, looked at him with a complicated expression bordering upon fear, surprise, and confusion. With neither of them knowing exactly what to say, it took the intervention of the bleeding Gue'la Sergeant pumping precious vita profusely upon the floor with each slowing heart beat to brake the tension.

"You alien scu…" he didn't get a chance to finish as Kais, operating on a trigger reflex, blasted a very large and impressive hole in the center of the man's chest cavity causing the creature to tumble backwards with a sharp exhaling grunt.

It wasn't personal. Kais just thought that the human had been dead. So, naturally when he had spoken… well… some first reactions, while startled, are hard to ignore. The nurse seemed to cower away from the seemingly random act of violence, until she saw who exactly had been killed. Part of Kais enjoyed watching her dour expression twist into a contorted approving grimace as she glanced upon the remains of the deceased Gue'la who lay upon the floor almost blown clean in two.

"What…" he started slowly while attempting and failing to mimic a stoicism which wasn't present within his mind, "is happening?"

"Happening?" she asked him, baffled, while pushing up into a sitting position. She exhaled sharply several times from evident physical paint before continuing, "The planet's been invaded. They… they attacked the hospital during the evacuation. What is wrong with you? We've been in war prep for the better part of a week?"

He eyed her and suddenly tensed as all the old memories came flooding back. Invaded. invaded? Flesh being torn from bones, things, unspeakable things come from metal walls to sunder horrified bodies cowering in huddled mobs panicking, fleeing, all in unspeakable terror, "Which planet? Is this Dolumar IV?" he asked with sharp tension.

The woman watched with much nervousness as the blood soiled Fire Warrior suddenly went very alert, scanning his surroundings for what she assumed were hidden enemies. There was something… 'wrong,' about him, but she couldn't quite figure out what exactly it was. He just seemed… high strung, like a cord on a musical instrument about to snap under pressure.

"Dolumar IV?" she asked him, baffled, "That was a year ago. This is T'ros. Who, who are you?"

The fact that the nurse didn't know Kais's name was to be expected. He was one of many patients and it was illogical to expect her to know every single person, especially those not assigned to her for specific medical care. And, this wasn't Dolumar IV. Those 'things' weren't here. He could still hear them at the edge of his mind, but they were far away. The threat of demons coming out of the walls to gore him into a nasty blue paste was a null threat.

"My name?" he asked her, first with tension, and then she saw him suddenly… deflate, almost like a balloon, lowering his rifle, the muscles in his arms resting, "My name?" he replied calmly. The nurse watched the Fire Warrior eyeball her with world weary eyes and then turn away, not with shame, but with humor.

"I don't have a name anymore," he eventually replied. Something about the way man had said it made the wounded nurse feel cold on the inside. If she had to guess… the blood smeared Fire Warrior standing before her was somehow… broken. For all her skills in the medical trade, she couldn't sense a single shard of empathy in the man at all.

"So tell me…" he asked her with a nonchalant head nod, "how many of them are there in the hospital? A rough estimate will suffice."

The nurse gave the Fire Warrior a bewildered blink. Of all the questions this man could have asked her regarding the current circumstances, the first inquiry was regarding potential combat pacification, how odd. "At least fifty," she replied, and then back peddled with a hint of cowardliness, "but we can't fight them. We have to escape and find other survivors!"

The Tau Fire Warrior drenched in human blood smiled fondly while approaching the door to his prior isolation cell, "Fifty Gue'la," he asked to no one in particular, "I'll be right back. Do me a favor and stay put."

She watched him slide his hand along the exterior locking controls causing the pressure door to close. The chambers sound dampening muted her frantic yelling as Kais knelt over both dead guardsman outside of the isolation cell. Part of him found her panicked screaming… funny, as he began to strip the Gue'la kit from their bodies. Interestingly enough, he didn't feel any sort of shame from robbing their butchered corpses. Part of him knew that it should be there, the lingering guilt, but… it wasn't, and he needed their equipment to survive.

It was quite simple really. He might potentially find Tau arms and armor somewhere in the medical facility upon a fallen corpse of his own kind. But, that was a dangerous assumption to make, and he knew that the place was crawling with enemy infantry. No, it was far better to equip inferior Gue'la weapons and make due until the place was sanitized.

And so Kais performed his grim task of stripping a primitive las rifle, ammo, and frag grenades from the fallen human soldiers. As if suddenly obtaining a sense of being naked in his thin clothe isolation ward clothes absent of all forms of body armor, the fire Warrior also inspected one Gue'la's suit of thin flak armor. He thought about it briefly and decided to steal it as well.

Standing to attention outside the isolation cell, Kais finished strapping the stolen flak armor around his waist. It wasn't the best fit, but it would do for the moment until something better could be obtained. Apprehensive, he turned around to notice the nurse leaning against the door on her blood-stained palms. She had a look of disdain upon her face as if in admonishment for his crass theft of the tainted arms and armor.

Kais noted how weird that was, how unpragmatic. Was it really so hard to understand and accept the reality of the situation? Well, in all honesty he didn't care. Without so much as a word towards the scowling woman, the Fire Warrior turned and started to walk down a nearby corridor, stolen lasrifle at the shoulder, his mechanical leg tapping ominously upon the floor with each step.


	3. Fifty Corpses

It had been a while since Kais killed his last human. Realizing that Dolumar IV had occurred well over a year ago made the Fire Warrior feel… sentimental, he supposed? It was a weird feeling, fondness for the bloodshed. Of course, what was even more disturbing was how he felt about pretty much everything in general right now. Under normal circumstances any sensible Tau warrior would be feeling scared, perhaps angry, maybe even a little bit pessimistic about his odds for survival. Kais… felt none of that. There was nothing there. Literally, just a vacuum where those normal pesky emotions should be hiding. All Kais felt was, intrigue? Yes, intrigue was the correct word. In place of all those emotions lingering within the Tau gene-pool which gave adaptable mental survival traits was instead a calm of the likes of which the Fire Warrior had never before experienced. He wasn't scared, just curious how he was going to kill all the guardsmen scattered throughout the hospital. It was like a puzzle… a puzzle he had to solve with guns. There was no elaborate preamble to his rampage. No heroic speech upon the facilities vocal address system where he makes a mockery out of killing them all. On the contrary, all Kais did was enter a random room and start shooting people.

…

"Wee-hoo these here blue skins ain't that tough," cheered a guardsman as he slit the throat of a wounded Tau male whose skin was blotched in some sort of bacterial infection, while the creature struggled, kicking the white sheets of his hospital bed with hooved feet. It was kinda pathetic all things considered. These here aliens weren't worth the Imperial Guard's time of day. This was the seventh hospital room the assorted gang of troopers had cleared of survivors left behind from some sort of hastily planned xenos evacuation, and thus far ain't a single blueberry fought back worth a flying shit. They was' just-a killin' the worst of the wounded who couldn't of been moved in time, and killn' them was like strangling mutant babies in their cribs.

Suddenly, the door opened behind the guardsman with a hydraulic woosh, "That you Sarge? You done a' play'n with that their blue skin nurse?" The trooper laughed out loud… and was shot in the back of the head blowing his brains out of his eye sockets in a gore ridden evaporation of pink steam.

…

Kais calmly shot the first Guardsman in the head at ten paces just after having entered one of the hospitals General Holding Rooms. There was no war cry, or gesture to alert the stupid bastard. Kais, out of combat reflex and with no preamble, just pointed and popped the man without a second thought. The trooper's compatriots lingering within the room at first didn't know what was going on, and were slow to react. So, the Fire Warrior tracked his stolen Guard Issue Lasrifle across the room, shooting two more men as they stood up from their murdering of the wounded left behind from the prior Tau military evacuation.

The second trooper caught two beams of lancing las-light center mass and fell backwards against a hospital bed with a gurgle of evaporated water steaming from his cooked lungs. A third trooper stumbling across the room to get his own lasrifle leaning against the wall took an energy lance in the shoulder. Kais watched the man spin in midair, tumbling to the ground with a wet smack. Without remorse, the Fire Warrior calmly walked through the disorderly chamber, over numerous discarded objects upon the floor, and with the rifle held nonchalantly in one hand blew the troopers face off at two paces.

There was a muffled yell of alerted voices somewhere nearby and the Fire Warrior heard running footsteps coming down the hallway. Quickly, Kais took out a Terran combat talon and waited next to the doorway. A single panicked guardsman ran into the room without checking his corners. Kais stabbed the man in the ribs with one hand, and as the trooper contorted from pain, the Tau aptly fired his lasrifle at point blank range up and into the human's face. Bone, blood, and hair splattered onto the ceiling in a thin pink paste as Kais used the combat talon to spin the human corpse around as makeshift shield while exiting the room.

Three more troopers instantly opened-up with their Lasrifles on full-auto, standing outside in a semi-circle, as the xeno warrior waltzed out into the hallway. The beams of red light trembled the decapitated corpse with steaming whelps as the Fire Warrior steered the fleshy remains by blade, using the human body as a makeshift shield. The resulting gun battle occurred at five paces as Kais, once more one handed, fired kill shots with his stolen rifle. All three troopers crumpled over into stuttering broken shells, one human still instinctively toggling his trigger finger wildly in death as he fell over, cascading las-beam fire down the hallway.

Kais tossed the dead and heavily gored troopers remains aside and took a brief opportunity to reload the stolen Guard rifle. His fingers fumbled with the unfamiliar breaching mechanism despite his best efforts. Mentally, he took a brief body count… Ou'tau (10). He had killed ten troopers thus far including the ones back at his containment cell. Not bad, but he was just getting started.

Still there was precious little time to reflect upon such matters as Kais heard more footsteps running towards his position. The Fire Warrior looked at the dead troopers at his heels and grinned humorously as he took a primitive frag grenade attached to the stolen Terran flak armor. The device was rather simplistic. All he had to do was pull the pin and keep the lever pressed down to avoid triggering the internal fuse.

…

"Sir, over-here! We got ourselves some wounded!" yelled a Guardsman leading a small band of his comrades towards the gored bodies resting ramshackle upon the hallway floor. Damn-it all! The hospital was supposed to be secure following their initial sweeps. All his platoon had to do now was just some mop-up of these pansy-ass blue xenos. The very idea that some Emperor forsaken turd muncher was runinn' around fragn' his buddies was unnerving.

One of the troopers, the first one to reach the tumbled over remains of his dead buddies, hunched over the most intact body lying upon the floor hoping that this man might have taken some glancing fire and was merely unconscious. Before anyone could stop him… the trooper tried to roll the body over.

What happened next happened to quickly for anyone in the group to react. As the dead trooper was rolled over onto his back… a compressed frag grenade sitting under his belly blew its ignition pin and popped comically into the air before rolling gently to a stop a meter away into the crowd of armed men. None of them had the common sense to quickly react. Five seconds later the grenade exploded.

The man kneeling on the floor tending to the other dead troopers lost his right arm and most of his face instantly. A split second later, most of his organs were pulped into bloody ruins by the fragmentation chaff. Another trooper was blown back by the concussive force and stumbled against the wall smearing bloody fingerprints from some shrapnel wounds to his legs. The last trooper took a flying piece of metal to his throat cutting a deep bloody gash through his wind-pipe. All three men had their eardrums blown out and couldn't hear anything but their own dulled screams. They had just enough time to realize how totally fragged there were as a tiny little shit blue xeno peered around an adjacent three-way corner junction to the hallway and opened fire with a stolen Lasrifle killing any survivors.

…

Kais laughed to himself as he ran away from the Imperial Guardsman he had just shot up. If the humans didn't realize that they were under attack earlier, they sure did now because it was highly unlikely that the grenade explosion went unnoticed. His actions, though effective and inspired, now also limited things. They were going to be alert following his attack, and less inclined to fall for such easy tricks. So, he pondered how best to approach things as they closed the noose around his location. The hospital was a big place with lots of room to hide, but by the same token his actions were limited given their numerical superiority. They still had the bodies to pin him in. Unless… well… he could always attack. The Fire Warrior grinned to himself, yes, he could attack them and stay on the offensive.

As the fire warrior ran down the hallway he could hear more troopers briskly moving to intercept him from an adjacent corridor. They were going to meet at a T-junction up ahead. What to do? What to do? Kais had a moment of inspiration as he took one of the stolen Gue'la frag grenades from the combat webbing, pulled the pin, and intentionally let the ignition prime. Mentally, he counted down while running with the live grenade: Ki'au, Mu'au, Pi'au. At two remaining intervals, he threw the grenade at an angle so that it bounced off the T-junctions wall and into the running troopers line of sight.

"Is that a fra-!" yelled a human male right before a loud explosion decorated the air with a thin haze of red mist and a swash of vita slashed across the T-junction wall like someone had thrown a bucket of paint.

…

Kais didn't even slow down. He rounded the corner and pressed down on the trigger filling the hallway before him on full-auto with las fire. There were five of them. One man, crawling away on broken legs with blown off kneecaps, took four las rounds to his back and stopped moving. Two men holding their gored eyes melting blood from their sockets screamed as they took lances to the chests, evaporating flesh and causing them to contort wildly before falling over dead. Another man, missing his left eye and bleeding from his sternum tried to fire on the fly with a single hand. Kais blew the right side of his face off while running forward into melee range. The last human tried to batter the xeno away with his rifle. The Fire Warrior tackled him to the ground, pushed the rifle away as the human pulled down the trigger cascading the red lances away wildly into the surroundings, and stabbed the human in the eye socket with a combat talon. This last human opened his mouth to cry out in pain, but the best he could manage was a surprised gasp as he died. Kais slit his throat just to make sure and stood up. More footsteps were converging in from behind. Apparently, he had been correct. They were going to try and encircle him. Unfortunately, the Fire Warrior had already escaped the trap and used a few precious seconds to strip some of the human corpses for ammo before escaping. Mentally, he calculated how many Gue'la he had snuffed out so far. Ou'oiu (18). Not bad. Not bad at all.

…..

"What-choo mean there's some dingle-berry' running around fragn' our buddies!?" demanded Lieutenant Shark as he took a large-red-metal-can of liquid promethium and started to douse it upon a gagged blue-skin tucked away into one of them their cog-boy barrels. The little frager was screaming himself flush with the gag in his mouth as the Gue'la finished his task, tossing the empty can aside without a second thought.

"It's like I said LT, one of dem critters done got feral on us. At first we thought we'd just corner the little bastard, but then he done gone and blew up about a dozen guys to pieces with grenades and what-not," reported a lone private.

"Well… dog-gone-it, and here I was a-hopn' we could just mop up these here blue berries and get back to the proper killn' in the city," said the Lieutenant as he struck a match to light his cigar. The human took a few deep puffs and promptly tossed the still light match into the barrel. The Tau screamed and pulled at his restraints as the liquid promethium alight and quickly covered him in hot red flames. The two guardsmen stood watching the alien burn like a mother-frager, grins upon their faces, "Ahhhh… frag this shit! Get Berny and his crew to sweep the rooms with flamers. Ain't nothin' as beautiful as some damned XE-NO turned into burned bacon in da' mornin'."

…

Kais was hiding in the sub-roof of a private hospital room when the gas masked man walked in and started spraying a fume of flaming gas across the interior. The Fire Warrior could hear the Gue'la laughing to himself as the bedding started immolating along with the remains of a dead Earth Caste woman. The scent of tainted flesh and charred plastic sept throughout the floor as more men and women of the Imperial guard wondered around with their clumsy equipment torching everything in sight.

Something about the fire, the smoke, the meat… triggered a primal part of Kais's mind. He could feel it in the back of his head, the whispering, and his mouth watered with salivation. The human man was below him, laughing and burning away with his chosen tool of destruction. The Fire Warrior could smell his stench, that sweat of human fat on his tongue. His mind wanted it, wanted it more than anything in his entire life. 'Rip and tear,' whispered the voices, 'rip and tear,' they demanded again and again. Kais shook his head, but they wouldn't leave him alone. The smell, the taste of it, he couldn't take it.

…

Berny loved his flamer. Some part of his mind thought of the tool as somewhere between a phallic extension and an actual woman. If Berny could have made love to his framer, and made little flamers together, and died together in a giant bonfire, he would have. The curves of the tanks, the way it felt when he set some poor bastard to the torch. He loved his job, the look on those alien faces when he light them up like a dried-out pine tree. And so, it was, he laughed and laughed as a small blue shadow crept down from the ceiling, teeth wet with hunger, gasping heavily like some sort of beast.

When it happened, it happened fast. The alien was upon him, stabbing him in the face, tarring through the gas-mask eye lens and going right into the brain with a combat talon. Berny had just enough consciousness left when the alien started to dig his teeth into his neck. That part scared him.

Berny had fought many a fragging alien, but none of them had actually tried to eat his body let alone some turd-thunking blue berry Tau. What was wrong with this critter? Well, it didn't matter. Berny faded away just as the Tau sat rod-straight on his chest and laughed manically with glee as streams of red blood trickled down his chin and throat.

…..

Kais felt something inside of him unhinge. He could feel it shift like someone turning off a light switch. One moment, he was a Tau warrior apathetic to the task of murdering the guardsmen throughout the hospital, and the next… he was liberated. Truly free, free of the bonds of civilized thought.

He sat upon the dead human and felt the warm blood trickle down his throat. It felt good. It felt right. Kais looked at the flamer lying motionless upon the floor and felt a sudden need to kill. It wasn't a rational feeling born out of the desire for survival. This was something else. It was a thrill, a lust for blood burning inside his mind and taking over his libido. The Fire Warrior took the tank of promethium from the human troopers back and strapped it on. The handles of the flamer felt comfortable in his hands as he laughed wickedly and ran out into the hallway in a crazed frenzy.

Two humans instantly looked at him with bewilderment. Kais sat them on fire, and then ran past their immolating bodies as they spun and twirled trying to pad down the flames. The Fire Warrior ran, he ran and hunted, coming face to face with another gas masked human. At first the trooper tried to raise his flamer to hit the charging Tau, but failed to react quickly enough.

Kais tackled the man, pulled his head aside, and bit into the neck. A gush of blood erupted like a spray and the Tau took the Gue'la's melon of a head and bashed it against the floor until it felt like jelly. With maniacal laughter, the insane Tau stood to his feet and ran away looking for more humans. He didn't have to run far. A group of them were guarding the perimeter, but they were relaxed. Kais rounded the corner, and doused them flames as well. The stench of burning pink flesh and padded clothing filled the hallway as they tumbled over wreathing in agony as hair and skin melted off their bodies.

There were six of them in all, contorting like blackened mummies upon the floor. Kais didn't give them a second thought as he ran past their smoking corpses coming face to face with another human male. This one looked startled as the Fire Warrior grabbed him by the shirt and threw his body to the floor. Here the Gue'la landed with a wet smack and started to crawl away, "Monster, it's a god-durn monster!" he yelled.

Kais laughed with approval and light the man on fire. The human rolled over and over on the floor much to the Tau's amusement as the liquid promethium burned away his clothing, skin, and features leaving a charred leather corpse behind. And then… something changed. Something was wrong. Kais looked at this hands gripping the flamer. He was covered in human blood. When had he… oh god… he had just.

The Fire Warrior took the tank off his back and threw it aside. Quickly, he ran into a nearby hospital room and looked at his reflection in a mirror. Blood, human blood was everywhere. He was completely covered in it. Yet, he didn't feel anything… except for perhaps bewilderment. What had just happened? How did he just lose control? Why did it feel soooo good? Kais did a quick mental calculation. Pau'oiu (28). Twenty-eight dead humans. That was more than half, and certainly pleasing to his regained sensibilities.

…

When Lieutenant Shark saw the bodies, he felt his blood chill. That damned Tau blue-berry had gotten ahold of some of their kit and done did a damned rampage. Berny was fraging dead. The xeno had fraging eaten him. Most of the men going through the area had been fraging cooked. It was a fraging mess, and it was… scary. Lieutenant Shark was man enough to admit when he was fraging scared. It ain't no liberal thing to admit encountering something which sent hairs on ends. This Tau turd, he fought like a fraging devil. Half the platoon was dead, and they hadn't so much as fraging seen the bastard yet and lived to tell the tale.

What was left of the Unit was here with him, gathering the charred and broken dead soldiers from the hospital complex out into the central plaza. It wutin' right, being made a group of yellow belly cowards from a single fraging Tau blue-berry! But, what choice did the Lieutenant have? The little bastard had picked his platoon apart piecemeal until they were at half strength.

As Shark thought things, he heard something clatter down with a metallic thud nearby, into the gardens. His eyes instinctively focused in on a promethium tank resting suspiciously near a parked Salamander where some of the dead bodies were being loaded for transport. Something was wrong. That tank shouldn't be there. He slowly started to back away as a sudden feeling of being watched crept into his mind.

….

Kais grinned wickedly as he stood on the roof of the hospital and looked down into the patient plaza where the wounded could enjoy the gardens during their rehabilitation. The Gue'la had appropriated this area as a makeshift command post and were spread out dealing with numerous dead bodies from his madness. From his position of cover the Tau Fire Warrior did a head count. Pau'au (22) The remainder of the Gue'la soldiers all gathered together in one spot. This was perfect, and Kais made his plan, assembling his rifle ammo in easy each, stolen frag grenades lined up in a nice neat row... those fools, they had made it sooo easy.

With a well-placed throw, the Fire Warrior chugged the promethium tank from his captured flamer into the plaza right next to an armored Salamander. Only a single human noticed the fuel tank land, and started to instinctively back away. Good man, good instincts, but far too late. Kais took his stolen Lasrifle, aimed, and fired a single shot.

…

The world turned into a flaming hell before anyone knew what was happening. Three troopers went down instantly from shrapnel wounds as the Salamander buckled, upended, and came crashing down like the wrath of the god-emperor itself from some sort of massive explosion. Before anyone could respond, sniper fire cut down another four from the roof with lancing beams of light. Six more died from grenades landing all around the plaza. Their bodies were flung into the air where they disintegrated into fragmenting pieces of flesh held together by their combat fatigues. Blood, fire, and twisting metal exploded through the exposed plaza taking down a pair of xeno trees split asunder and torn aground with flaming dirt. Only nine guardsmen survived the ambush, and Lieutenant Shark wasn't among them, but they could see him, or what remained of him. The Lieutenant was slumped over the lip of a crater missing his legs and half his face. A single dead eye was wretched out of its socket staining the side of his face with oozing blood and pink brain matter.

The last of the Guardsman craned their necks to try and find the sniper as they huddled together behind the remains of the burnt-out Salamander. They knew that Tau frager was on the roof, but where? One by one, they were shot down until at last everyone was dead. They never even saw him… even at the end.

…

Kais leaned back on his haunches right after blowing the head off that last guardsman. Off to his side… the sun was setting over the horizon glistening a slight shard of amber red across the horizon. He found it rather beautiful… and… "Right… the nurse," he said in brief reflection. The Fire Warrior stood to his feet and started to walk towards the roof exit, contemplating stopping for a brief bath before returning to the wounded nurse. Hopefully, she was still alive. Then again, perhaps he shouldn't stop for a bath? Perhaps, he should return to her first? After all, he looked good in red.


	4. Of Ghosts and Demons

The trip back to the Fire Warrior's containment cell was quiet, calm, and… cold. Kais could feel the air growing crisp as ice crystals started to slowly form along the windows lining the corridor. All around him were the remnants of fierce combat, the las scorches along the walls, blood, broken floor and ceiling panels. Yet, it was growing cold, oh so cold, the air in his lungs rasping in pain as it conflicted with Kais's internal body heat.

Then he heard it, a soft humming from a feminine voice as the lights dimmed to a subtle blue. It was coming from up ahead where darkness lay at a hallway t-junction. That was strange, the darkness had just emerged from nowhere within the past few seconds to eclipse the end of the corridor. Kais stopped in his tracks. Something about this made his nerves rattle as a thin wisp of cold hair hazed from his mouth like a morning fog.

Slowly, from the shadows, emerged the transparent form of a female guardsman. She was young, barely more than a child, her body covered in tattered and torn flak armor. It was her eyes, those two dead eyes which haunted the Fire Warrior, like a secretly judgmental Geist reminding its slayer of former past sins.

"Who are you?" he asked while raising his stolen Lasrifle. The young woman halted her approach, extended her arm, and pointed. A single bead of sweet rolled down the side of Kais's face as he slowly turned around. Behind him, standing right before his very eyes not but a foot away… was his father with those two perfect black eyes upon his ancient chiseled face peering into his soul. This was wrong, his father was dead, this wasn't his father. Without knowing it, Kais started to instinctively walk away from his father towards the ghost of the female guardsman. As he did so, the air started to grow warmer, his breath started to become less stale within his lungs, and the lights started to brighten from dull blue to sharp white. And then, just like that, the hallway started to deice and thaw.

As Kais passed the point where the female Gue'la's ghost should have been standing he saw nothing, nothing except for two muddy bootprints. She had been real. The entire encounter had been real, and Kais knew… he knew something was wrong with him. The warp, something demonic, something bad had followed him from Dolumar IV.

In a mad panic, the Fire Warrior ran back to his containment cell. He was frantic. Fear having now claimed his sanity. He felt those dark emotions for the first time since emerging from his deep slumber, the dread, the fright, the noting of his stomach as all-consuming horror wretched away his bowels. The killing came naturally now without the fear, dread, without the horrors of war; but this was different. Kais could feel the eyes upon him, stalking him from every shadow. Something was there, something could see him, taste him. His sweat felt like ice water against his skin staining his clothes as he ran like a man to whom the feeling a noose slowly tightening around his neck was becoming all the more evident.

Kais rounded the last corner and came upon the containment cell doorway. The nurse sat there quietly upon his bed, her face turned slight so that he couldn't see her face as he approached in a frantic shuffle. She never stood up despite the noise he made. Kais waved his hand over the door panel to deactivate the lock. He had to escape. He had to take this woman and run as fast as he could because something else was in this hospital and it was going to kill them both.

The door did not open. Kais tried again and again, waving his hand over the motion tracking locking mechanism. It wouldn't work. It wouldn't open. Once more, and then he turned to face the nurse with frantic horror, and this time she was starring right at him.

Kais backed away slowly. Her eyes, she had no eyes, just two gorged out holes where they should have been and twin trails of blue bloody tears running down the sides of her face. She raised up upon her broken legs, and walked towards the containment door. Kais watched her through the glass panel as she started to bang her hands limply against the glass, trying to break it, trying to get to him. Her hands were leaving blue bloody fingerprints where she tried to breach the glass.

How? How had it happened? She should have been safe, secure. Kais felt his skin chill and saw ice slowly forming along the glass panels of the containment cell. He turned and faced his father slowly walking towards him from the darkness of the hallway, the lights deactivating before him with every approaching step. Quickly, searching for a way to escape, Kais looked down the other two hallways. On was basked in similar darkness, but within the other stood another ghost, another woman… but this one different.

Kais had seen similar clothes before. This one wore the great coat of an Imperial Commissar, but she was clearly dead. The left of her face was a torn ragged mess at the jawline from some sort of gunshot wound. The Fire Warrior watched her nod once and then disappear into a wisp of icy mist. Behind him the cold darkness consumed the hospital, and so… Kais ran. He ran towards the light, towards where the second human ghost had once stood. Behind him the darkness began to race, hospital lights exploding in faint sparkles of ashen filaments, shards of glass falling from the ceiling as the sharp wind of death kept at his heels. Kais could hear it, the thing which wanted his soul, scratching at the borders of his sanity, hungry, oh so hungry. It followed him, even as he ran into the hospitals central plaza.

It was here that the darkness halted against the pyres of burning debris from his prior raid. The icy cold ebbed against the Fire Warriors flesh as the night crept closer and shied away in screeches of pain when confronted by the fires light.

Kais felt his soul churn as his father stepped forward from the darkness, those two black eyes boring into his soul like daggers. Together they stood apart, separated by the boundaries of light and darkness, neither speaking, neither flinching to dissolve their resolve until first dawn.

The night was long and filled with the crackling of burning flames as the wind shuttered the nearby leaves of bushes and trees. The darkness kept its distance in a wash of bitter cold. Something about the fires lighting the area as distinctly wrong. The flames should have died away long ago from a lack of fuel, but they burned on despite it all. Kais dared not remove his eyes from his father less the creature lurch forward to pry the soul from his body.

Together they stood at odds for hours until at last the red light of dawn started to creep over the horizon of the ocean. Kais didn't know how long he had stared down the ghost of his father, or more to the point the thing wearing his father's face, but at first dawn the image blurred in pain and receded back into the hospital. It took Kais a bitter moment to feel the whispering fade into nothingness within his mind. It was gone, vanished, whatever it had been…

For a brief moment of subsiding fear, Kais stood there willing his hands to stop shaking. The resulting shift came quickly, like flipping a switch. One moment Kais was scared, and the next he felt nothing. The hole had returned, and now… he had to know. Kais had to know if it had all been real, or just a figment of his tattered psyche. So, he went back into the hospital, and slowly walked back to his containment room. There was no fear, just the calm, the calm of the dead no matter what he might find.

When he reached his cell… there was nothing there. The dead Gue'la troopers were gone, vanished, not even their blood remained. The nurse was nowhere to be found. It was like they had never existed in the first place. All he found… was the second set of bootprints from the ghostly Commissar who had helped him escape the second encounter with his father's specter.

Part of Kais wanted to search the hospital for the woman, but he knew… he knew deep down that he wouldn't find her. 'It' had taken her, it had taken her long before Kais had returned from slaughtering each and every single human in the hospital just to save her. He should have never left, he should have never abandoned her, but he had… He would regret it later, when that switch flipped again and the emotions came back… of that he was certain.

There was nothing left for Kais here anymore. Just the dead… and the ghosts, and regarding those ghosts, he thought it strange… their faces… he was certain that they were not his victims. Why, he wondered? Why had they helped him?

Kais guessed that it didn't really matter right now. What mattered was escaping, finding people he could trust, finding a way to protect himself from the darkness hunting him in the shadows. Out in the city he could find help, he could find…

When Kais heard it, he felt a chill run down his spin. Off in the distance there was a distinct whisper of primitive radio static, and a voice… a Gue'la voice, "Hello, can anyone hear me?"

The Fire Warrior shouldered his stolen lasrifle and started to sweep rooms on the fly, looking for the source of noise. Eventually, he found a dead Gue'la trooper lying face down upon the floor. Upon this man's back was a bulky portable radio, what the humans called, 'a vox system.' Kais knelt upon the floor besides the fallen trooper's body and picked up a crude handheld phone attached to a rubberized cord.

"Hello?" he asked. There was a long delay filled with static, and then he heard a befuddled laugh, "It's you isn't?"

"I… who is this?" asked the Fire Warrior with an incredulous snarl. The Gue'la laughed bemused once again and gasped out of exasperation, "You know?" started the human with a chuckle, "I honestly didn't expect things to playout like this. I thought… I thought I had doomed everyone."

Kais felt taken aback by such a… weird admission, "What are you talking about? Who are you?" asked Kais once again, this time with a mixture of sympathy and sternness. The human gasped shallowly on the other end of the vox and said, "I can't answer that question right now because you honestly wouldn't believe me. Listen, seeing is believing blue skin. If you really want to know what this thing hunting you actually is… then I recommend finding me."

"You know about the darkness?" asked Kais. The Gue'la chuckled once again, "I know that this thing which pursues you can't be slain through force of arms, but it's forced to accept certain rules. If you want to survive another day come and find me. I'll be at the lighthouse along the coastline. But be forewarned… the things here… you'll need to kill them first."

"What things?" asked Kais, rising to the challenge. He human chuckled once more, "Oh… you'll see soon enough," and just like that the line went dead. The Fire Warrior sat there on his haunches considering things. This human, whoever he was, knew what was going on. He knew about this thing hunting him. He knew… Kais knew… that this was a priority. If that thing wearing his father's face found him again… he might not be able to stop it.

The Fire Warrior back-tracked through the hospital and came to a window overlooking the city. The metropolis ran along a coastline shaped like a crescent. Dark black fires forming from the immolated remains of several skyscrapers shrouded the horizon as far as the eye could see. It was dreary, and the sight of the broken city skyline with its tattered remains of fractionally broken spires made the Fire Warrior seethe in disgust. Yet, he knew what had to be done, and so Kais focused his sight along the coastline until he saw it, a small plateau near the far edge of crescent. Upon its ridge rested a small stunted building topped with a light beacon to accommodate aquatic ships venturing the planets oceans into safe harbor. That was the light house, and within it was the human…

Kais nodded to himself, and walked away. Getting to that lighthouse before dark would require a vehicle, and so he back-tracked towards the hospital entrance, past the still lingering corpses of numerous dead Imperial Guardsman. They were real, their broken bodies smelling of rotting meat and sewage. Of this, Kais was certain.

Outside, the hospital was surrounded by a small masonry perimeter wall which could be easily traversed. However, there were 'other' complications. As the Fire Warrior wondered around the building, through numerous exterior gardens and poorly temporary parking fields, he noticed that all the Tau civilian vehicles had been destroyed or were too badly damaged to be properly used.

Thus, he was forced to consider alterative options. Parked around the front of the building were numerous Gue'la Imperial Guard vehicles including several armored transports, but what caught Kais's attention was one of the small scout vehicles. It was a simple ground car upon four rubber tires with a heavy caliber stubber bolted unto a flatbed. Of the assembled vehicles, this one was potentially the fastest, and Kais needed speed more than anything right now.

So, the Fire Warrior clumsily leaned into the vehicle, sitting his body into the driver's side seat. The craft was primitive, but luckily the controls were rather simplistic. Though the Fire Warrior had never driver a human vehicle before, he was quick to figure out the numerous transmission controls of the seat lever, including reverse.

Kais quickly backed the vehicle up using one of the floor peddles and prepared to drive away. As he did so, he made the mistake of looking into the hospital. Lining the windows, looking down upon him from the second floor, were fifty standing Imperial Guardsman and a single Tau nurse. All of them were missing their eyes, scowling, scorning him for his failures. Kais only felt bad for the nurse. The humans, all of them still sporting their physical wounds upon their respective bodied, he personally felt nothing but hate for given the brutality unleashed upon the wounded left behind from the evacuation. Even in death… they could kiss his ass, and so Kais drove away into the city.


	5. The City of Graves

Entering the Tau metropolis along the coastline of T'gor was a subtle shift between a lush green forest of pine trees to a low-lying series of prefabricated housing units laid out in a perfect grid pattern. At first glance, everything seemed calm and quiet, yet… by the same metric oddly 'off.' It took the Fire Warrior a few moments to determine what exactly was wrong with his surroundings because honestly… it was the last thing he expected.

There were no people here. Not just Tau, but no human Guardsmen either. Everything was eerily slient, and an ominous calm filled the air leaving only the sounds of crackling fires and idling engines to fill the vacuum of noise. This was despite the numerous primitive bulky Imperial war machines blocking off certain streets. It just seemed wrong. The outlying areas of the coastal city were just empty.

Kais continued to drive his captured enemy vehicle down the perfectly straight city streets as allusions to combat damage appeared randomly around the surrounding vista. Blood stains upon the roads and lawns, burning pyres of… what? Kais stopped his vehicle, stood upon his hooves, and craned his neck to see down a nearby alley. What were they burning? Unfortunately, he couldn't tell from his angle. A thick grey haze slowly crept into the heavens blotting out the sun.

Kais jumped for the guard issue vehicle and walked at a slow trot down the alley. The stench of cooking fat made his mouth water as he slowly crept closer to the roaring bonfire blaze, and it wasn't until he was close that he finally noticed them. Bodies, Tau and Gue'la alike, thrown unto the bonfire, burning. Even at fifty paces he could see the blackened charred skin of the corpses cremated down to the meat and bones. Any skin, hair, uniforms, or other form of identifying marks had long since been scorched away from the remains upon the pyre leaving contorted gaping maws moaning in eternal agony.

Kais watched them, his eyes like daggers glaring into the flames, and he saw it… the screaming. They were still alive, waling in pain and sorrow.

He slowly backpedaled down the alley with his stolen Lasrifle at the shoulder one step at a time, scanning the corners for hostile contact. For the first time, he started to hear noise all around him, the sounds of shuffling footsteps, slow, methodical, like infants learning how to walk. Kais turned and ran towards the stolen Imperial vehicle as fast as his feet could carry him, and as he leapt into the driver's seat… they appeared. Men and women, Tau and Gue'la alike, all stumbling from the ruins of the suburban utopia which was once part of The Greater Good. They shambled forwards upon gored bodies, broken bleeding limps, skin and hair torn asunder by lances of las fire.

Kais didn't need to think about it. He simply slammed his hooved foot upon the forward movement peddle and ran over the nearest corpse in his attempts to escape. It was a Gue'la woman, missing her right eye. She broke off at the knees and rolled up onto the hood of the vehicle spraying blood like a fountain from her sundered sockets. The Fire Warrior watched the wretched creature press her face against the glass before his face and leave a sickly bloody mouth print from her lips as she tried to eat her way through awning. He instinctively swerved hard to the right causing momentum to throw her off the hood and into a lamp post breaking her undead spine with a crackle.

More of the things were appearing the further Kais went into the city as the lower personal habitat units phased away into towering skyscapers. The sounds of sporadic las fire echoed throughout the broken ruins of once mighty monoliths of Tau engineering.

The city was in bad shape with giant shards of broken metal and masonry collapsed onto the roadways in giant mounds two to three floors high. Smoke trailed from hundreds of bonfires dotting the numerous buildings which due to shattered glass almost seemed skeletal in nature. Yet, the sounds of combat prevailed all around him within the shadows and backdrops of lingering long since passed disaster. It was clear that those still fighting… were survivors rather than an organized army.

Kais continued to drive slowly through the sundered remains of the city, listening to the roaring flames and the cries of the damned as they echoed the frantic fears of numerous last stands. And then… a lone Imperial guardsman dressed in tan combat fatigues and green flak armor stumbled out into the street with his arms raised, one hand holding a lasrifle by the barrel, as he stepped in front of scout vehicle to flag it down, "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!" he yelled. The Fire Warrior thought about running the trooper over and flooring it to escape some sort of unknown encircling trap. However, it was something about the Gue'la's eyes, the fear perhaps, which made him reconsider.

"Identify yourself!" yelled Kais, coming to a stop and rising from his seat while sighting the trooper with his stolen lasrifle. They locked eyes as the guardsman did a double-take down the alley he had just come from and swallowed a knot in his throat.

"Guardsman Janok, 401 Kaltorian Light Foot… I… I… I…" Kais stopped the man before he could piss himself, "Are you alone?"

"Yes sir," simple and to the point.

"Get in," the trooper obeyed, and no sooner than he had hopped into the passenger seat than a small horde of shambling undead erupted from the alley as they sped away. Kais considered things as the guardsman looked over his shoulder at the undead mob before turning back around with a look of immense bitterness.

The trip, or drive… was brief and awkward. Together they sat in silence while slowly moving through the crumbling burning city seemingly abandoned by any military presence. Finally, Kais spoke to break the gulf between them, "I just woke up yesterday," he admitted to Guardsman Janok, "Anything you can tell me…" The Fire Warrior stopped instantly and in annoyance as the human suddenly pressed the barrel of his lasrifle against the side of the Tau's head.

"Pull over." Kais did as he was ordered, and after exhaling sharply from anger turned to face the trooper so that the gun barrel was pressed firmly up against his forehead. The guardsman eyed him nervously, fidgeting in his passenger's seat while keeping the lasrifle leveled against the Fire Warriors head.

"You sure you want to…" the trooper interrupted Kais while motioning with his head, "Get out."

The Fire Warrior raised an inquisitive eyebrow, "Your safety's on," the trooper was just dumb enough to shift his eyes away for that very brief second to check. In that instant Kais rapidly used his left arm to push the rifle away from his forehead. Guardsman Janok panicked and pulled the trigger a fraction too late. Kais's vision distorted wildly as one eye went white and faded into blurry post flash images of awkward shapes, while the other retained perfect clarity of Guardsman Janok being impelled upon a combat talon along the left flank, under the ribs. Blood seeped through the Gue'la's clenched teeth as Kais pulled the talon free and stabbed again except harder and into the exposed side where the flak armor didn't protect the mans liver. A thick and warm trail of crimson trickled down the Fire Warrior's knuckles as he looked the trooper in the eyes.

"Why?" asked the human, bewildered and with a whisper.

Kais nodded disapprovingly, "because you're too stupid to let live."

The Gue'la clenched his jaw in defiance and then with heavy eyes nodded approvingly before he expired. Kais unceremoniously tossed the corpse from his stolen Imperial vehicle and drove away, stopping only briefly while resting his forehead against the steering wheel of the vehicles primitive controls. The Fire Warrior mumbled bitterly to himself and looked in the rearview mirror. What he saw next made his skin crawl and blood freeze.

Standing erect in the center of the road, bleeding crimson vita from his still torn wounds was the Gue'la trooper known as Janok with black bulging veins protruding from under his skin. The undead trooper smiled; actually smiled, while flashing two dark orbs for eyes, and then started to slowly walk towards Kais's vehicle with a slow yet determined stride all the while encompassed within the shadowed awning of a skyscraper's bulk.

The Fire Warrior knew that the human was possessed, but by what remained unclear. He could have stayed and killed it, but some part of him, some small remaining part of his numb survival instincts made him reconsider. So, Kais drove away and watched in the rearview mirror of the scout vehicle as the trooper vanished behind a wall of smoke blowing over the street. Part of Kais thought himself cowardly as he shied away from the unnecessary confrontation. Another part of him understood the rationality of fearing the dwindling daylight given his experiences within the hospital. He had hoped to reach the coastline, and meet this human who claimed an ability to render aide against this thing… this thing which was chasing him, but it was becoming evident that time was going to run out before that happened.

It was growing late into the evening with shards of red light ebbing through the smoke clouded sky as Kais continued a winding path through the battle worn city, the tires from his stolen vehicle grinding against loose stone strewn across the roadways. It was all the debris crowding the city streets, and the fact that the Imperial vehicle couldn't hover. Sure, Kais had considered stopping to find another slightly more agile means of transport, but… those things, those walking corpses could find him anywhere. Then there was also the risk of being shot down from some sort of gun wielding psychopath hiding within one of the towering habitat structures strewn across the crescent bay. The greater risk, Kais was certain, was in attempting to fly to safety threw a war-torn cityscape filled with undead and panicked survivors.

And so Kais continued forward with agonizing slowness, his knuckles gripping the steering wheel of the primitive craft as if his life depended upon it. Occasionally, one of those things would stroll out into the street, a shambling dead thing being either Tue or Gue'la, with broken limps and lifeless eyes. The Fire Warrior merely swerved to avoid the shambling husk rather than risk catapulting it up over the wind screen of the craft and into the exposed passenger compartment.

Of course, there were other concerns. Concerns that Kais always felt lingering at the back of his mind with some hint of awkward wariness. Last night, the hospital had proven the cruel dangers of demonic threats hunting him down during the abyss of the night. He knew that this thing was stronger when the sun set. It moved more quickly and could do things to inanimate objects which bordered upon insanity. The Fire Warrior knew he had to avoid a direct confrontation until he knew exactly what he was dealing with… and more importantly how to properly protect himself.

Unfortunately, his worst fears were realized as the sun finally set, and a sharp cold wind started to speed across the terrain causing ice crystals to rapidly freeze and form upon exposed window panels. There was also a faint drape of white creeping fog forming over the road surface as the shadows moving across the broken skyscraper surfaces began to feel more unnatural as they twisted into illogical patterns inconsistent with the above shining moonlight. The sky also started to darken until it was an unnatural swirling cloud with a massive red orb at its center… except… this wasn't a moon. Kais felt his skin crawl and his blood run cold as this giant red sphere slowly opened like an eyeball and blinked revealing a single reptilian slit. It was watching him. He could actually feel it watching him, but that wasn't all…

Kais could feel himself starting to change. Once more it was like a light switch. One moment he was serene, calm, at peace despite his obvious faults; and the next he was afraid, more afraid than he had ever been in his entire life. It was the night. It had to be. That was the only explanation. Something about the thing hunting him was messing with his internal psyche, making him feel more afraid during the night. That was it! Yet, this realization came far too late to be of any proper assistance.

The Fire Warrior continued to feel his soul being crushed by fear, his fingers gripping the steering wheel with dread, as he continued to wind through the city streets. And then it started, at first as a quake and then as something… more.

There was a woeful wale bordering upon a shrill screeching scream coming from everywhere as the monstrous skyscrapers glimmering within the crimson moonlight suddenly fractured their glass panels causing slivers of sharp projectiles to rain down upon the streets. Undead were impelled and gored by broken glass in all directions as Kais hunched over in his driver's seat hoping to avoid being struck by the solid carbon rain. All around him things were turning hectic. One foul undead took a large shard to the neck slicing necrotic flesh in twine down to the pelvis. He swerved to avoid the worst of the glass rain as the shadows began to twist and converge, breaking steel girders, snapping them like twigs.

Those shadows, they were consuming the skyscrapers from within, forcing them fail structurally and collapse into ruins of broken masonry. Kais floored the Gue'la vehicles propulsion peddle and started to roar down the causeway leading towards the coast. Behind him the skyscrapers were beginning to fracture, belching large clouds of pure darkness, twisting and contorting into awkward irrational geometric shapes. They fell in roars of twisting metal beams and tattered rockcrete, crashing into the ground behind his vehicle.

It was unnatural. The clouds, the clouds emerging behind him were funneling up into the sky like tornados of pure darkness, propelling broken bodies and fractured buildings alike into the red glowing eye hovering over the city. Buildings, cars, broken things all crashed down around Kais, all propelled by terrifying winds almost as if he were driving through a hurricane. It was like a vortex of power evil sweeping through the city and picking up the dead walking corpses of Tau and Gue'la alike.

He continued to run, pushing the vehicle to its best. Behind him, in the rearview mirror, the black tornados swooped up into the darkened skies where white lightening crisped the heavens, only to come crashing back down again and disappear underground. The streets started to buckle. Buildings were collapsing all around Kais as the road started to irrationally rise upward. He had no choice, he had to escape.

Kais ramped off the road and came crashing down upon the rubber tires on another road surface. Briefly, the scout vehicle scraped its bottom against the pavement of the causeway as its shocks contracted from the impact. Behind him a vortex of darkness swept up from the fractured ground… all under the watchful gaze of that single red eye in the sky. The Fire Warrior was certain, whatever that eye was… it was the sign of the thing chasing him, and there was no doubt that it was powerful.

The Fire Warrior was running scared as more rubble rained down all around him including a Gue'la Imperial Guard Baneblade tank which did a summersault while crashing onto its side amidst a broken habitat structure. At first Kais didn't think much of the sundered war machine, and then he noticed the darkness, the vortex of blackened wind swirling around the machine. Shortly thereafter, it came to life, possessed by unnatural power way beyond the capabilities of Tau science to explain.

The Baneblade lurched to life and ran sidewalls along the side of the habitat structure, landing down behind Kais's scout vehicle. It crashed with a boom of broken metal tarring beneath it's treads, sucked under and rendered into flattened waste, as the tank emerged through a cloud of torn rockcrete sundering before its bow. These things did nothing to slow the vehicle as it roared forwards trailing behind Kais, cutting a groove through anything solid and stupid enough to get in its way.

Ahead of Kais, the road started to collapse into a sheer drop of broken rocks. Instinctively, he rounded a jagged corner and upon seeing no other alternatives blew through some improvised fencing. Darkened yards and lawns blew past the scout vehicles exterior as Kais rampaged through numerous improvised suburban barriers made of wood and greenery. He also hit at least four shambling corpses. One of whom was a Tau woman missing half her face and shambling upon a leg burnt down to its exposed ligaments. When Kais accidently slammed into the creature, it exploded in a puff of gore upon his vehicles hood as the upper part of her body was sucked under. Briefly, the vehicle lifted up into the air with a mild thump as the rotting corpse flew beneath the tires in a streak of broken meat and blood.

In the rearview mirror, Kais watched the Baneblade swerve in its tracks to avoid plunging into the sudden drop of broken terrain. He found it stunning how something so massive could prove so agile… well… before it resumed trying to kill him. The Baneblade, after briefly recovering, pushed forward into the same suburb hot on Kais's heels, crumpling down several habitat structures as if they were made of cardboard. Then one of its side turrets started to track the scout car, and fired.

Kais swerved back and forth taking evasive maneuvers as excessively large caliber stubber rounds blew out chunks of the ground and nearby buildings, throwing up large bits and pieces of sod and timber shards as if they were chaff or confetti. However, before the sudden usage of enemy munitions could become a more pressing problem, the demonic thing hunting the Fire Warrior decided to compound the issue with yet another unorthodox threat.

In a grandiose display of raw power, the demonic entity hunting Kais dropped a massive twenty story habitat structure in its entirety right from the heavens and into his path. The windows of the buildings exploded outward from the sudden compression of physical mass and slowly but surely the building started to fall backwards with an agonizing moan as rockcrete collapsed from the surrounding terrain into a darkened pit down below.

Kais saw a brief opportunity to use this sudden and unexpected change in fortunes to escape the Baneblade, and gunned the scout vehicles engine while aiming for a large shard of broken rockrete jutting out from a partially collapsed habitat building. He hit the masonry wall and used it as an impromptu ramp, launching himself into the collapsing building, driving through a small office complex and out the other side as the interior within compacted flat like a pastry cake amidst a grinding of collapsing girders and broken glass. The Baneblade, through raw force of simply being excessively big, blew through the collapsing office building and out the other side in a cloud of glass and broken rubble in hot pursuit while void of all consequences to its demonic possessor.

However, the Fire Warrior was near the coastline now… and he saw something off into the distance. It was a marina, light up with spotlights. Slowly, those lights converged upon his scout car and then upon the pursuing Baneblade tank. In the rearview mirror Kais watched the lights gouging huge chunks of molten metal, bleeding the Baneblade like a gored animal, peeling away from the tanks exterior armor plating almost as if those basic spotlights were somehow plasma based weapons. The tank started to slow with a whimper of gasping demonic cries and then as the spotlights continued to gore its hull eventually it simply exploded into a cloud of black smoke and broken metal.

Sundered steel rained down around Kais as he gunned the engine and made a mad dash for the marina. The vortex of black clouds continued to pursue him up until the spotlights started to phase into them causing the demonic entity haunting the city to scream a shrill cry of agony.

And just like that, Kais pulled into the marina and slammed on the brakes coming to a halt. Behind him the skyscrapers continued to twist and distort through warp sorcery as the lights of this one last refuge kept the darkness at bay. Without warning a fellow Fire Warrior, and a much unexpected Imperial Guardsman appeared by his side.

"You friend…" said the Guardsman with a smile, "Are one fraggn' lucky bastard!"

Kais turned back towards the city and at the edge of the darkness where the lights ended stood the demon possessed body of Trooper Janok. Kais smiled fondly at the corpses sour expression, before the foul thing faded back into the shrouds of ink surrounding the marina.

It was now that the fellow Fire Warrior spoke while also looking at the shroud surrounding their position, "What did you see?" he asked. Kais didn't bother lying. He was far too tired to even try, "Someone I once killed."

The fellow Tau nodded sagely and walked away. It took the Gue'la Imperial Guardsman to elaborate, "You will find that all of us see things in that damned demonic fog. People we've killed, regrets mostly. My advice is to not look at it… it's easier that way."

Kais raised an eyebrow and ventured a question, "Tau and Imperial Guard working together?"

The Gue'la trooper frowned deeply out of mentally ingrained disgust from the Imperium's dogmatic indoctrination to hate anything not Terran in origin, "An alliance born of desperation. That thing out there," he indicated with a finger towards the darkness, "Took just as many of us as it did you. The whole damned planet is 'infested,'" that last word spoken with much bitterness, "With arisen corpses and possessed people."

"And this marina?" asked Kais, pressing his luck.

The human trooper nodded calmly though the Fire Warrior could sense an underlying layer of hurt pride, "It was an Imperial Guard Med-evac point during the invasion. Lots of lights and plenty of generators to keep them a-going so that the Valkyries could make their runs. During the first night when everything went to shit… the Tau moved right on in, overrunning the barricades with sheer numbers. We weren't happy about it at first, but once the undead started eating people… and the transports stopping a-coming… well… survival makes strange bed fellows."

Kais leaned against the scout vehicle as he considered this. He considered how he had just a day ago been murdering Imperial Guard soldiers as if it were a sport. He considered how he had murdered trooper Janok. And then… upon already lingering at the edge of exhaustion from not sleeping for almost two days straight… he collapsed. The last thing he heard was the Gue'la trooper yelling for a medic.


	6. Fire Warrior Rekindled

Kais could feel the cold against his skin as faint tickles of ice formed against his skin from his prespring sweat. The cold always served as the herald to evil when the things which dwelled within the warp threatened to emerge into the physical universe. Part of him found it soothing to be reminded that such evils existed, and he as a Fire Warrior lived to combat them. Well, that was an inaccuracy if the Tau was to be honest with himself. The Fire Warriors served as the bulwark in defense of The Greater Good. Whom or what they fought was merely an extension of their existence, their purpose.

Purpose, now there was something important. What was his purpose? Kais knew deep down that he wasn't a Fire Warrior anymore. He had no Hunter Cadre. He was alone, a small fragment of his true self just struggling to exist and survive. He should have been scared, perhaps angry, but he wasn't. If anything, Kais found the experience liberating as he accepted who he really was once the thin veneer of civility was stripped away leaving the barbarian adrift from the guarantees of inner peace at the costs of obedience to the Ethereal Caste.

For the first time in several hours Kais opened his eyes and squinted them tightly as the above head light glared down blindingly from the ceiling. His hand instinctively tried to blot out the blurred images dancing before his sight as someone leaned in from a nearby chair, "Easy blue-skin, you're safe," spoke an educated and civil voice with a hint of some sort of twangy accent.

When the Fire Warrior turned his head to look at the man trying meekly to hold the Tau down against some sort of bedframe he noticed blurs of grey clothe and white skin. There was something else, the man was slightly over-weight, and wore a pair of round-lensed spectacles upon his face… a Gue'la? "Whe…" he rasped with a parched throat which pained from the sudden movement. The human was becoming increasingly clear as the daze of foggy shapes faded from Kais's vision. Quickly, as if concerned for Kais's health, the human reached to a nearby wooden stool and picked up a glass of water.

"Here, drink this," Kais obliged and exhaled sharply as several lingering seconds of calm and quite passed by without converse while he guzzled down the unnaturally crisp and cold beverage. The Fire Warrior also seemed puzzled by the ice which had formed within the inner sides of the water glass as he exhaled sharply from a pain spasm in his prior empty gullet.

"What happened?"

The human guardsman leaned forward and smirked comically if not patronizingly, "I don't know how to answer that blue-skin. I think the best explanation is that the… 'people' here are fragged. It's been about four days since this 'invasion' first started," the Gue'la sighed deeply, "And surface contact with the flagship up in orbit has been lost. I have also been led to believe that the effort to recapture it has been… 'partially' successful.

It was now that the Fire Warrior looked into the human's eyes. His… Azura blue eyes, which seemed to lack something basic and important. Much to the Fire Warrior's dismay it was almost like this human was wearing a mask rather than speaking to him directly. There was also the uniform the Imperial Guardsman wore, grey, rather than green. Thus far, in Kais's recent memory, this was the only trooper he had ever seen wearing that unique color. And, it was now that Kais realized exactly how cold it was as his skin prickled while a vapor of cold hair blew from his mouth like a smoky fog.

Kais mumbled to himself spitefully from the sharp pains lancing up his arms and legs as tried to sit up in the bed with his back up against the wall. To his surprise the human didn't try and stop him this time. Instead, the Gue'la merely sat the partially empty cup of water aside, and turned to face the doorway. "Listen blue skin," he said with forlorn woe, "I'm going to be seeing you around. When you're up for it… I recommend seeing the armory here at the marina. I wish that I could do more for you; I really do, but… I'm afraid that my time is up for the moment."

Kais watched the Gue'la with much suspicion as he left the room, stalling briefly within the entrance as his physical mass was illuminated in a sharp white light, "I didn't get your name Gue'la," he called after the grey clothed human trooper.

The Imperial Guard Gue'la chuckled while closing the door behind him, "It was Templeton, Captain Templeton." Almost instantly after the human's departure the cold within the room started to dissipate and normalize with thawed ice crystals receding from the windowsills. Kais knew, he knew with certainty that the man he had just spoken to wasn't natural. Yet, he wasn't a demon. That much was certain. Perhaps, perhaps he was something else… a ghost maybe? Given the prior night, some sort of lingering shade would be far from the most haunting thing that the Tau had encountered within recent memory.

Kais took a few minutes to ease his nerves before shifting in the bedframe to brings his legs over the edge and unto the wooden floorboards. First the flesh and blood leg, and then the mechanical prosthetic. In a rush of hurt to his battered muscles, he pushed himself into a hunched over standing position. It felt like he was being stabbed in the back as the Fire Warrior took his first step forward, lurching to a stop with sweat crisping upon his brow from raw pain crisping up his spine. Then he took another step, and another, and another until he faced the door with bloodshot eyes. When he opened the wooden exit, there wasn't a blinding white light which greeted him like his prior guest. Instead, the marina was illuminated in a dull orange as the sun rose over the horizon of the ocean waves illuminating the water in cresting images of distilled darkened ink reflecting and receding back into a blue tone of salty liquid from its prior possession by evil incarnate.

He turned to face the city and noticed that the shadows were receding back into the far reaches of oblivion just like the ocean surf. As shards and beams of orange light tore through the metropolis, the darkness moved like tentacles over the opposite horizon, retreating perhaps from the light creeping forward with the dawn of a new day. As the shadows fled screeching in pain and agony, as reality burned the truth back into existence from the edge of madness… so too did their corruption to the city recede. The terrain reformed and the buildings rematerialized as if nothing had ever happened.

"It's unnatural," said a Gue'la Guardsman loitering nearby, motioning with his head towards the city while casually holding his lasrifle across his chest. The human grinned at Kais with a slight bit of mockery before further elaborating, "Every dawn is the same way. This evil crap comes out during the night and turns everything against us, and then we wait it out until dawn arises cleansing the land with light. Then everything goes back to normal like nothing ever happened."

"And the undead?" asked Kais. The trooper frowned and awkwardly shifted his footing, "That depends. Sometimes they still linger in the city, and sometimes… they are taken."

"Taken?"

The trooper nodded and motioned towards the perimeter of the marina where a hastily erected barricade had been formed from metal panels and badly mauled vehicles. Every once in a while, soldiers defending from the impromptu battlements would fire a gout of flame into some sort of wailing mob, "This thing is strongest in the night, but it still has some power during the day so long as it remains within the shadows. You'll see the ones it took inside buildings, cowering really anywhere there isn't any direct physical contact with a light source." As if grasping Kais's confusion the guardsman further explained what exactly he meant by taken, "Possessed," blunt and to the point, "Undead or simply abducted living. This thing took countless men and women, Tau and human alike, and is using them like puppets. But, it's limited by the light."

"Is this normal?" asked Kais. Even though the Fire Warrior was debatably a defacto Tau authority on the creatures of the warp from his past combat experiences on Dolumar IV, something about the trooper's explanations left room for personal doubts. It came as no surprise as the Gue'la shook his head in bewilderment and concern, "No, or at least that's what our officers said when everything went to shit. They say… said…"

"Said?" asked Kais. The trooper nodded, "Our Command Chain is mostly dead. Sarge is in charge right now… for what's it worth."

The Trooper quickly resumed his explanation, "They said, once a demon enters the materium it's on borrowed time. It can only stay in the materium so long as it's got enough juice to keep on going. But, what's going on here is nothing like that. This thing is way too powerful. The amount of warp magic it wields, the things it can do, the numerous people it can control like pawns… no demon should be able to do that."

"And yet it can…" said Kais mockingly.

The trooper smiled and nodded approvingly, "And yet it can," he repeated and walked away. Kais watched the Gue'la slowly wonder away along his patrol of the marina before quickly gazing about for signs of his own kindred race. The Tau need not have looked far. Nearby, overseeing maintenance of a dismounted Crisis Suit was a lone male pilot in yellow combat armor. Kais slowly walked up to the man, his mechanical leg loudly tapping upon the wooden dock of the marina as he did so. Without preamble, the fellow Fire Warrior turned around with a faint humored smile as the sunlight reflected eerily off of his blue skin.

"I'm glad to see you awake Shas'la," spoke the pilot while putting away his data pad and giving a mild salute by briefly pounding his clenched fist upon his right armored shoulder pauldron. Kais raised a quizzical brow upon his weathered face from the action, "Shas'la?" he asked. The pilot suddenly crisped to attention as if he had been slapped, "My apologizes Shas'El. I should have known better given your performance during the night whilst escaping that monster's siege of the city."

Kais laughed self-deprecatingly, "Saal'la, I am…" Kais thought hurriedly for the correct words given how long it had been since speaking with his own people, "Uninitiated."

The pilot looked at Kais with wide eyes and faltered in his salute. It took a few very long moments before the man could properly recompose himself from the shock, "Saal'la…" he said both disapprovingly and out of bewilderment, "You have been robbed Mont'yr Shas."

Kais didn't deny it. Instead, he decided best to show some dignity, "To be fair, I would have been inducted as a Shas'la with what remained of my cadre had it not been for the…" he took a moment to consider sharing the entirety of his truth with the pilot, and in the end decided against it. Instead, the Fire Warrior choose something far less detailed, "…M'yen circumstances on Dolumar IV."

At the mention of the distant worlds name the pilot went pale and shook his head woefully at Kais, "You were there, weren't you?" he asked, gasping from equal parts concern and awe, "I always heard rumors that one of us was here. One of the Lar'shi who…"

The pilot suddenly smiled and rubbed the back of his head childishly, "I apologize shas'…" catching himself, Kais instinctively grinned thus encouraging the pilot to finish his verbal slip, "I apologize 'shas'la." It wasn't much, but it was what Kais needed. Officially, it would take a ceremony to induct him fully into the Fire Caste, but just that one detail, that one acknowledgement was enough, shas'la… Fire Warrior Soldier.

"Thank you," said Kais, fully meaning it, and then with a sigh got down to business, "Shas'Ui, I require arms, and to report to an 'El."

The pilot nodded with a broad grin and pointed towards a nearby building with a few green fatigued and armored Imperial Guardsman lingering outside, "You will find our impromptu quartermaster within, along with their… Gue'la equivalent. Shas'El Vior Kauyon is on the top floor. You will find that he is typically distracted from his daily dealings by the lone surviving Gue'la commander. If memory recalls, the human is an Imperial Sergeant called Keplar."

"Thank you Shas'Ui," said Kais to the pilot. The pilot replied correspondingly and returned to his duties as the battered Fire Warrior limped away towards the makeshift armory. He noticed the Gue'la part ways for him with shocked faces. Some even made a bizarre religious gesture across their chests and mumbled faint words ranging from fear to awe.

…

There were only a couple of small buildings at the marina, but the largest structure, some sort of miniature office building, served as the armory and command center for the surviving infantry struggling upon the surface of T'gor. The interior was lined with salvaged gear ranging from suits of Tau and Guard body armor to every imaginable weapon within the two respective military factions. Kais couldn't help but let his eyes skim over the mounds of ammunition and equipment, cherry picking his favorites, as two men argued in the background with their verbal shives becoming louder as they paced through the structure towards the Fire Warriors position.

"I told you, you Emperor forsaken blue skinned bastard, there ain't nothing, and I mean nothing, that a good old fashioned boomstick can't solve," said a human dressed in green armor plating, rounding a nearby corner at a brisk angry pace. Behind him was a Tau soldier dressed in his own respective yellow combat body armor and together they halted nearby and started yelling at one another mockingly about some sort of dispute regarding their respective combat doctrines.

"Typical Gue'la," replied the Tau snidely, "You lack fire discipline, and therefore substitute ego for your lack of talent."

"Ego, ain't nothing egotistical about common sense. You close with the enemy. You shoot the enemy," said the guardsman with a hand chopping motion. The Tau shook his head with a snarl of disapproval.

"That's insanity," he replied briskly, "It is wiser to keep your distance and pick the enemy apart with artillery and well placed rifle fire. Closing ground only increases causalities where common sense should have prevailed."

"Don't lecture me on tactics you god-dourn blue bastard! The Imperium owns this universe and that means we know what we're fragging doing," raged the Gue'la.

The Tau motioned towards the doors where Kais stood with a wave of the hand, "Yes, and you're doing so well. Look at all the undead, and the demons. It's a pity you threw away all your infantry in the first few days. We could have really used them now," Kais chuckled at the Tau Armory El's usage of sarcasm causing the two men to instantly cease their bickering and turn towards him.

"Shas'la… you look terrible," said the Tau Armory Officer. The Gue'la Guardsman cringed as well. Kais laughed self-deprecatingly and shook his head side to side as if dispelling such notions, "You will need to forgive me Shas'El for this conflict has not been kind to me," replied Kais with a smile.

"Ain't that the truth," replied the Gue'la Armory El' with crossed arms while standing nearby, "You look like a Grox done ate you up and shat you out." The human recomposed himself with a laugh and picked up a Tau data slate. To Kais's surprise, the Shas'El did not complain about the forbidden appropriation of technology and merely allowed the human to do as he pleased.

"Well…" said the human, "It ain't like we don't have the toys. Let's get you kitted out blue-skin. Tailor," he motioned towards the Tau Armory El', "Bring me my scissors."

"I'm not your damned tailor," snarled the Tau El' as the two men took Kais's measurements with a three-dimensional modeling tool and keyed in a search for matching sets of armor using the data-slate. The Gue'la nodded approvingly and stalked away to a distant corner of the building. A few moments later he returned with a large plastic container and sat it down upon a nearby table for Kai's inspection.

"Well," said the Gue'la Guardsman, "I hope you like the color red."

Kais walked over to the plastic container and opened it. Within was a suit of red combat plates, a black bodyglove, and an overlying uniform of tan combat fatigues. He nodded approvingly and looked towards the Tau Armory El' with a smile while the human walked away, "Where can I change?"

"This Office Building served as a small business front for those wanting to rent boats in the marina. Outside, you'll find some communal bathing stalls for those who used to walk the beaches. I recommend washing yourself and changing in the stalls before going upstairs to speak with Shas'El Vior Kauyon and Sergeant Keplar, who is the Gue'la El'."

Kais nodded in understanding, took the plastic crate, and left the building. Nothing had changed outdoors since he went to obtain his equipment, and thus Kais ignored the numerous Cadres and Guardsman patrolling or lingering about the marina as he himself walked down a set of wooden steps towards the beach down below. Once again, makeshift barricades had been constructed along the waterfront to prevent the undead from flooding into the marina. Men and women lingered about with flamers, using the abandoned vehicles as makeshift battlements as they burned away the encroaching hordes.

Kais ignored them and limped towards the civilian showers upon his mechanical leg with his hooves digging into loose sand and rocky pebbles with each step. Upon reaching a thin rockcrete structure just below the marina's overhang awning, he opened and closed a small green curtain and started to undress. He could hear other people doing the same as the blood stained clothe slowly peeled away from his sweat stained body revealing numerous old bruises.

The Fire Warrior then activated the shower function and gritted his teeth as a high-powered wash of bitter cold water blew down upon his fully exposed body. His skin prickled from the cold as the stink of old blood and bile trickled down his legs and hooves and into the drain down below. After rotating around so that the shower washed his backside, Kais turned off the valve and knelt to open the plastic armory crate as loose beads of liquid ran down his exposed aching frame. First, he adorned the skin-tight black bodyglove, hurting sharply as he bent at awkward angles to force the conforming suit against his bruised body so that the nano-poars fit comfortably against his skin. The bodyglove was meant to increase infantry effectiveness by recycling perspiration back into easily leathered Tau skin, and subsequently also dealing with the side effect of stink from extreme physical activity accumulated during prolonged combat exposure. While the bodyglove covered his immediate flesh the external infantry threads provided the first physical defense against any actual enemy munitions. And thus, next he slid on the tan combat fatigues made of composite nanocular thread so that they covered the bodyglove with something far capable of halting a small caliber round of live munitions. Lastly, he strapped on the numerous battle plates of the traditional Tau Combat Armor made from ultra-dense nano-crystalline metal, and adorned a combat monocle to study the interlinked HUD system outlining his current physical status. According to the data readouts everything was in perfect working order.

Kais flexed his fingers fitting within his new gauntlets and grinned. Part of him felt puzzled with his new highly unorthodox suit of combat armor because it was painted an untraditional red, but honestly… it wasn't something to be obsessed over excessively. So, he simply pulled aside the drape and exited unto the beach with the now empty armory crate under one arm. Once back within the make-shift command center he dropped off the pod and ascended the steps to meet his new superiors debating over a makeshift command table with primitive paper maps stretched outward to the four corners with numerous circles from empty recaf cups overlapping at the edges.

"And I'm telling you that we don't have the troops to make a run for the spaceport…" the Gue'la Sergeant trailed off as Kais entered the room and came at attention with a fisted salute to his new armored pauldron. Both the human and Tau commanders seemed to beam with surprise as they ceased their current deliberations to inspect him.

"So, the legendary Shas'la T'au Kais lives after all," said Shas'El Vior Kauyon approvingly. The Gue'la Sergeant nodded sagely, probably because he had nothing to contribute to this 'Tau Only' issue. Kais grinned and nodded respectfully to the two men, "Of course Shas'El, I live to serve The Greater Good."

The human chuckled and motioned towards the map table, "Yeah, The Greater Good. It can't help us now, now can it?" Kais raised a wrinkled blue brow and his commander placated with a brief explanation, "You will need to forgive the Gue'la Sergeant young hunter, but… he is indeed correct. We are a small hold-out, cut off from supplies, reinforcements, and evacuation. Unless something changes soon… we are merely waiting out the inevitable."

"The term is dead-men walking," replied the Gue'la known as Sergeant Keplar with a hint of bitterness, "We've been abandoned to our fate with no chance of escape."

Kais saw this moment to chime in with his own information, "Sergeant Keplar, Shas'El," he addressed them both, "On the way here I intercepted a transmission from a human who claimed to know how to combat the things infesting this world. This human claimed to be hiding at the lighthouse up the coast."

This brief spark of hope gained the attention of both commanders, "This human, did he identify himself to you?" asked the Gue'la Sergeant. Kais shook his head bitterly.

"You suspect a trap, maybe one of the Taken?" asked the Tau to his allied commander. The human glowered bitterly at the sudden disappearance of this brief flash of hope to escape T'gor also known as the world of the damned. Before the situation could deteriorate further, Kais interjected, "I want to volunteer to recon the light house regardless. Whether it is, or is not a trap… remains irrelevant to our plight. As the Gue'le El'… as Sergeant Keplar said, 'we are dead-men walking.'"

The Tau and Gue'la commanders thought briefly amongst themselves and nodded at Kais approvingly. It was the Gue'la who spoke first, "You go alone, and risk only yourself. We might be dead-men walking, but I have no intention of needlessly spending lives which can't be better spent on our last stand."

Shas'El Vior Kauyon interjected next, "See the armory downstairs. Help yourself to whatever you need. It isn't like we're short on arms and equipment anyway."

Kais saluted by fisting his pauldron and turned to leave as the Gue'la Sergeant stopped him with a word, "Blue-skin," he addressed the Fire Warrior, "Be weary of The Taken. You'll find that they are more than capable of tricking you into dangerous situations…"

Kais nodded with a grimly and left the command room. Once down below he approached the two bickering Armory El's who had since rekindled their debate, "It's called a shotgun you damned idiot and it's perfect for fighting in the trenches."

"Well perhaps if your artillery had done its job properly then maybe you wouldn't need to be fighting in the trenches in the first place," jibed the Tau right back.

Kais approached the two men with open palms, "I require a weapon," he simply stated. Both men suddenly gained a gleam of madness in their respective eyes. It was now that Kais unfortunately discovered that he had handed them a golden opportunity to wage a personal war of military morals through the dispersion of live ordinance.

"Long range, medium range, or short range?" asked the Tau with a smile. The Gue'la grimaced, "If that's how you issue weapons no wonder your empire struggles. Tell me who you're killing and where trooper. I'll kit you out for the situation right proper."

Kais stopped them both, "Just a pulse rifle… and maybe something for up close," The Tau Armory El' scrambled away to find a standard issue carbine while the Gue'la went over to a rack of weapons to retrieve something…. Something Kais had never seen before.

"This here is a Tarsus IV Scattergun," said the Gue'la as he sat a very large and heavy looking weapon upon the counter before spinning the weapons drum free to expose at least fifteen cartridge slots, "The Scattergun is for good old fashioned up close killing. Each cartridge has its own personal charge and fires roughly fifty grapeshot ball bearings within a one foot splatter diameter at twenty paces. If you hit someone with this… they'll go down and stay down," The Tau El' grumbled a protest upon returning, "But it has terrible range. If you want to do some real killing, use this carbine," Kais took the offered pulserifle and slung it over his shoulder before returning to inspecting the human weapon being offered up by the Gue'la.

"What about ammunition?" he asked. The human nodded sagely and slung two large bandoleers unto the table. Kais went wide eyed as he skimmed over the two hundred rounds of ammunition, "This should get you through the day," said the Gue'la knowingly.

Kais picked up the shotgun and noted how heavy it felt. Before he could ask the Gue'la interjected, "Just make sure to press it firmly up against your shoulder when you fire it… or else your collarbone will snap like a twig."

Kais sighted the weapon, noted the safety swtich, and threw it over his back as well, "Grenades?" he asked. Both Armory El's kitted him out with their respective favorites, giving Kais three Frags and three Photons. The Fire Warrior attached them to his belt and nodded approvingly to both men before leaving. Oddly enough, his sudden acceptance of gear had evidently ended their roving debate.

Outside, numerous humans and Tau warriors gave Kais a wide birth upon viewing the massive amount of fire power strapped to his person. Without a word, the Fire Warrior walked up to his prior stolen Imperial Guard vehicle, leaned into the passenger seat, and activated the ignition. A couple of Imperial Guardsman moved aside a barricade so that he could leave, and Kais roared forward running over a small batch of undead before continuing his trek up the coastline.


	7. A Beacon of Truth

The rain fell like a heavy burden upon the palm trees and sodden Earth of T'gor as the ocean waves crested and crashed down below the cliff face. Kais felt the tropical heat gnawing away at his dry blue skin. Had it not been for the bodyglove lining recycling the moisture from his pours the Tau was certain that his combat fatigues would have been covered in the stinky sweat from extreme physical activity. And, so it was with each wet and slow step of hooved boots sinking ankle deep into mud and sod, he crept through the jostling jungle foliage after having since been forced to abandon the stolen Imperial Guard scout car two Tor'kan out from the lighthouse.

Kais knew the dangers of approaching the lighthouse in a vehicle. The 'Taken' were expecting him. They had always been expecting him, hunting him, ever since escaping the hospital. No, they had hunted him long before then… Perhaps, they were just now catching up, and this was merely a formality of demonic lions going for the kill. Such imagery did not sit well in the Tau's mind as rain blasted down upon his exposed scalp in a torrent of razor sharp and cold saltwater. It may have been daylight, but he was certain that the facility up ahead was heavily defended in preparation for this one-man raid.

Lizards ran along the ground as a harsh wind blew through the palms from the heavy storm brewing and blowing in along the coast. The Fire Warrior could feel the drizzle of water running down his face, soaking his combat fatigues, and making him cold down to the bone. Yet, still he pressed on one step at a time until he saw it looming like a leviathan from a hilltop knoll.

The immediate area around the lighthouse had been cut-away leaving a fifty Tor'lek of open ground between the jungle and nearest structure. Of the nearest structure, there was a small perimeter wall of loose stone running around the base of the main complex topped with sporadic sandbag emplacements.

Loose raze wire bales dotted parts of the perimeter and were draped in rotting corpses being both Tau and Gue'la alike with their fleshes crisped by unknown flames until the pink of muscles darkened from rot lay exposed upon tattered backs of torn clothe. There was a smell about the area, a smell of cooked meat and rotting sewage as scavenging flies moved from corpse to corpse eating their fill of rotting flesh.

Kais scanned the lighthouse with his scout monocle while hiding amongst the jungle shrubbery. The lighthouse complex consisted of several small one story structures spread like a starfish at the base of the five hundred Tor'lek tower. Nothing visible moved amongst the darkened interiors of the buildings about the exposed perimeter. Thus, Kais stepped forward from his cover and slowly moved towards the facility while hunched over to present the smallest possible profile for las-lance fire.

At ten Tor'lek he sprinted the remaining distance and threw himself back first against the flimsy rock wall. Here, he listened. Only the sounds of crackling flames spoke from the surrounding ruins. With the grace of a burdened Grox, Kais hurtled the rock wall in his bulky combat armor and as a red flash ran towards the exterior wall of the nearest building. He crashed against the wall and peered nervously around the corner.

Nothing. Not even a single undead. Kais took a deep breath, feeling the hot air expand within his aching lungs, and peered around the corner again, "AHHH!"

This time he shouted out in fear as a ghostly transparent face stared him down. The Fire Warrior tumbled back upon his haunches and let loose a pulse blast from his rifle into the stomach of the ghostly apparition. If the creature took it as an offense… it did not show any annoyance. Instead, it simply loomed over him with a look of blankness upon its face.

Kais had seen two earlier ghosts within the hospital, but this one was different. It was a weathered old man with a wrinkled face and gnarled white hair. He wore a commissar's uniform with a peaked cap. The Fire Warrior noted the ghost's decorative sword and sash as the thing turned to walk away.

Just like the others, Kais thought, it was leading him towards something important. The Fire Warrior quickly pushed himself up off the ground in a grunt of pain and jogged after the ghost. He trailed behind it, following, always following.

"Who are you?" he asked. The ghost did not respond.

"Why are you here?" he asked. The ghost did not respond.

At last the ghost stopped and pointed towards a burnt out Gue'la scout walker laying crumpled against the collapsed wall of one of the perimeter buildings. Kais looked around the surrounding plaza and didn't notice any potential threats of merit. He turned to ask another question of the ghost… but by then… it was gone, vanished into thin air without a trace.

The Fire Warrior could take the hint at face value and quickly jogged out from cover to inspect the fallen scout walker, stopping briefly as he felt some intense heat blazing from some nearby associated wreckage. The vehicle was badly damaged. Plasma scorching had burned away a large chunk of the pilot cabin leaving melted metal leaking unto the rockcrete floor. Nothing, nothing to merit his attention. As Kais turned to leave, the demolished vehicles radio activated, "You there blue-skin?" asked the exact same male voice from the hospital.

Kais quickly leaned into the vehicle and grabbed some sort of primitive radio speaker. He fumbled with the device, pressing buttons at random, chanting back into the machine's speaker phone with every attempt, "Hello, hello, where are you?"

At last he managed the correct buttons and the male voice laughed back bitterly, "I can hear you blue-skin. No reason to shout."

Kais felt a faint hint of rage kindle within his breasts from such cheap mockery. He had crossed a city of undead monsters and braved the horrors of a demonic incursion only to made fun off by the same Gue'la he had risked life and limb to save. "Where. Are. You?" he asked angrily.

There was a short pause followed by the human unleashing a bitter sigh and responding, "I'm in the basement. Look… I don't know how to say this but you are in serious danger right now! Look around you, what do you see?"

Kais peered away from the crashed walker and took in his surroundings. There was nothing in sight, "I see nothing Gue'la," he replied nervously.

"I thought so," replied the Gue'la knowingly, "But that's not the case. Listen, I don't know how to tell you this so I'm just going to be upfront. Things… are not as they actually appear. You've probably already experienced 'flashes' by now when things shift. One second there is nothing there and the next… things trying to kill you randomly show up."

Kais remembered back to the illusion of first waking up, of first roaming the hospital, of first fighting the undead and meeting the illusion of Captain Ardias. None of that had been real… had it? It was now that Kais started to question his own sanity. It had all felt so real at the time, but to awaken again at the hands of a vicious beating by Imperial Guardsmen… None of it had been real.

"That actually happened," said the Gue'la. Kais felt his hands go numb as the hand speaker slowly slipped through his frightened fingers. How had the Gue'la known… he wondered, as he rapidly fumbled to reclaim the device slipping and falling from his grasp.

"Because I'm a Pysker," continue the Gue'la without skipping a beat, "And I can hear your thoughts as clearly as if you were standing right next to me."

"Then why the radio?" asked Kais snidely. To his surprise the Gue'la gave a jovial laugh, "Because Blue-skin… I'm not actually using a radio right now."

"I…?" asked Kais in confusion, "Come again Gue'la?"

"I've been imprisoned here deep beneath the lighthouse. Under normal circumstance… this wouldn't be a problem, but this is hardly a normal circumstance. As fortune, may have it, the warp runes keeping me bound to this place are… flawed. I'm using them to hone in on your spiritual aura even as we speak. As for the radio… that will be explained when we finally meet… face to face. However, I realize that this explanation might seem lacking so allow me to give a brief elaboration. You shouldn't place a lot of faith into what your eyes tell you. Not everything is as it seems at first glance. When you enter this lighthouse… you will understand. My advice is as follows… do not let your guard down even for a second."

And with that the radio went dead. Kais turned on his heel and skimmed over the lighthouse lawns. Briefly, ever so briefly, he felt as though something or someone had been watching him from up above. That feeling vanished almost as quickly as it had first arrived. Kais looked at the giant looming tower beacon sending its rotating cone of light out over the oceanic shoreline. He considered things, the risks and rewards of continuing with this fool's errand. And then, he shook his head of such nagging concerns and opened the door to the lighthouse.

Before him was darkness, damp and endless, and with a single step forward he heard a creak of whining metal… before the door self-closed behind him. Then it laughed, the walls and halls laughed as a sharp bitter cold crisped the air frigid forming crystals of ice across the Fire Warriors armor and fatigues as rain water went rigid and stiff in the warp tainted breeze. Kais felt his eyes narrow as the air froze the moisture upon the surfaces of window frames towards the day's turbulent storms along the coast as a sharp crackle of thunder boomed overhead. Alone, in the dark, he decided to switch weapons for the Gue'la scattergun given the potential for a close quarters fight. The Fire Warrior deactivated the safety, and shouldered the weapon firmly as instructed. By then… the first Taken had appeared.

…..

The possessed Tau and Gue'la wore corruption like a badge of honor. The first such creature to appear in the corridor was a Tau woman dressed in rages, with the skin of her body and face riddled in black bulging veins which seemed to pulse and twist with a mind of their own. She ran at him, laughing hysterically with black teeth salivating in blood lust. Kais waited until she was close, ten paces close, and pulled the trigger of the Gue'la scattergun. Instantly… he had a new favorite weapon.

The recoil from the scattergun was brutal. The Fire Warrior, unaccustomed to such unwarranted brute force felt his stance waver briefly as the firepower thrust him backwards against the demonically latched door. However, Kais did see what that single shot from his lovely lovely new weapon was capable of as the possessed woman's torso liquefied into a blue mist popping her arms, legs, and head like corks outwards into different directions as if shot from cannons. The Tau grinned wickedly as he saw his image within the small blood stained ball bearings rolling along the floor while the broken remains of what was once a physical body crumbled to the ground in a gory paste.

Kais couldn't help but laugh. He laughed loudly and bitterly as more Taken rushed him like a pack of feral animals from the adjoining rooms, but… he stood his ground. The scattergun rang out again and again, filling the hallway with broken bodies and gory meaty mounds of broken flesh. The dastardly weapon was like a meat hatchet at close range blowing people apart like ragdolls. As for the recoil, it was like being hit with a sledgehammer in the upper chest yet none could deny the damage being dealt. The Fire Warrior reveled in the carnage as men and women, people reduced to 'things,' with their minds and bodies stolen by something foul and wicked were blown apart.

One man, a Gue'la, took a shoot to the legs and toppled over like an empty sausage casing. He crawled closer to Kais upon his hands and elbows, blackened blood draining from his wounds like a paintbrush stroking a wall. At one pace away from Kais's position the Fire Warrior pointed his scattergun at the possessed humans face and rendered it into a fine example of modern art upon the lighthouse's carpeting.

The rush of possessed things ended in mere moments leaving the hallway littered in broken bodies and tainted black, blue, and red blood oozing into the carpets and floor paneling. A mist of gunsmoke filled the air as a woeful screech, like fingernails running along a chalkboard, echoed through the building. The tainted shroud of darkness seemed to receded in bitter defeat, and for the first time in apparently a long time… the lights of the lighthouses' interior light up in a dull yellow glow.

Kais kept the scattergun up against his shoulder as he walked forward over the broken bodies underfoot. He could feel and hear the squishing paste of meaty chunks under his hooves as he briefly scanned each room for hostiles. Nothing. No one. He was alone… or so he thought.

The Fire Warrior heard something in another room, a scuffle of papers and something less clear. He quickly turned the corner and found it empty… except… it wasn't empty. It was there, sitting in the chair, although just barely visible like someone had erased half of his physical appearance leaving a mere shell of the actual person.

Kais took a cautious step into the room and glared right at it. It was the man from earlier, the one called Templeton. He was sitting in a wooden chair before a plush wooden desk, smoking calmly with an open leather bound book before his eyes. As if sensing Kais in his peripheral vision he calmly closed the book and looked at the Tau with calculating Azura blue eyes, "I see you cleared the lighthouse of its taint?"

Kais grimaced and rounded the table to place his back up against the wall as a strong wind shook the building from the torrent outside. Templeton glowered at him and sniffled within the lingering cold, "You might have noticed that they were both Tau and Human. This place…" he motioned with his hands, "was once a holdout just like that marina. It served as a bastion… a refuge… but, the demon needed it for a task much more self-serving."

"What are you talking about? And what are you?" asked Kais while keeping his scatter-gun leveled at the ghosts bespectacled head. The thing known as Templeton laughed bitterly and took a deep drag from his imho stick before continuing, "I'm a ghost, a lingering fragment of the man I once was. The real Ambrose Templeton died in the Dolorosa Coil, but part of me… part of him remains."

"So, you're what… a demon?" asked Kais spitefully while slowly pressing down on the trigger. To his surprise the ghost actually laughed, "No blue-skin, I'm not a demon. Neither is the man in the basement. Neither is many of the people you've already encountered thus far. Surely… you've met them?"

Kais felt his nerves rattle as he remembered the other ghosts. The ones which never spoke yet which always seemed to lead him where he was most needed. Templeton seemed to read his thoughts and for the first time since randomly appearing to converse… he relaxed his posture. "Those… are something completely different."

"What do you mean… something completely different?" asked Kais.

Templeton took another long drag from his imho stick and leaned back in his chair. Oddly enough, the action actually caused it to squeak although the man clearly possessed no physical space and mass, "I like to refer to them as 'shades.' Technically, those are demonic entities who serve as tormentors to the man or woman he had wronged them. They aren't actual people so much as… there," the ghostly Gue'la took a moment to wrap his tongue and mind around the correct word, "let's say, 'regrets.' Demons, absorbed the regrets of those wronged in life and created a shade dedicated to haunting the guilty party in life. In your case… they appear to have wondered off track from their actual duty to assists you in… surviving?"

"Why? Why haunt, or help me?" asked Kais with great unease. The idea of 'friendly' demons didn't exactly sit well in the blue-skins world view.

"Because blue-skin," said the ghost of Templeton, "They need you alive. They need you to save the person they are still haunting so that they can continue to condemn and drag down that person's soul. Helping you… helps them conclude their duties to the victims of the villain who wronged those in life and to whose memories they now carry. There end goal is to condemn that man in the worst possible way that it is to be condemned. In order to do that… they need you alive."

"And why are YOU helping me?" asked Kais. Templeton nodded sagely and grinned, "because blue-skin," he said, "I want to see you succeed."

"Succ…?" asked Kais only to be momentarily distracted by a loud boom of thunder. When Kais looked back, the ghost of Templeton was gone leaving only the pushed away wooden seat and a burnt down imho stick sitting on the desktop. Wide eyed and startled by the encounter, the Fire Warrior backed out of the room and marched briskly towards the central tower. The lights continued to glow within the structure as the bitter warp cold dissipated from the air leaving a slight trace of warmth within the lighthouse complex.

Quickly, Kais started down the winding steps of the lighthouse tower and slowed once he noticed a faint golden light glowing as he came closer to the bottom of the staircase. It was majestic and warm. The Fire Warrior felt a bizarre calm feeling ease his tensed muscles as he edged closer and closer until at last… he saw the man upon his knees with chains wrapped around his body. At first Kais was surprised, with surprise fading into happiness, and then concern…

…..

At the bottom floor of the lighthouse, beyond the wards and terrors of the 'Taken' fiends, was a single room carved from bones and solidified blood. Scribbles, etchings, echoing dark whispers from the warp void murmured incoherent promises of menacing power from things so demented and psychologically damaged that mere mortals of the material world could hardly fathom the depths of their insanity. As Kais descended the rockcrete steps into this chamber he noticed something, something unexpected. It was a single man, a man of the likes of which the Fire Warrior had seen but once in his entire lifetime.

He was a creature of myth and legend, a giant among the breed known of as Gue'la, born unto the flock but elevated by station to something far more grand in the defense of the Corpse Emperor's realm. Upon his sullen frame tangled into a kneel by rusty chains the man wore blue armor with a sigil upon his right pauldron. It was the sigil of his legion, an inverted white omega contrasting the blue of his power armor. But, this one was different for he did not wear a helm or go barren in scalp. No, upon his head was a crude neural limiter, a pysker hood which glowed with golden light.

"At last you arrive blue-skin," spoke the human before Kais could enter his line of sight. The Fire Warrior faltered for that brief instant much to the Gue'la's amusement, "Don't be afraid… I have known of your coming for quite some time."

Kais resumed his march down the steps and turned to face the aged and troubled vision of this Gue'la captive. Much to Tau's surprise, the man had a firm gaze of sharp green eyes with crow's feet around the edges. Upon seeing Kais in person, the Ultramarine grinned with pleasure, "At long last… we meet face to face."

"Who are you?" asked Kais. Clearly, this human knew him, and not just by some strange legend or twist of fate. The Gue'la closed his eyes and chuckled with a laugh which made his chains rattle, "Now that… is the question is it not?" replied the human, "Who am I?"

Suddenly, he looked sharply at Kais and muttered uncontrollably of some long ago slight to his honor, "That bastard broke me when it… 'carved,' its way into the 'Enduring Blade.' In my last moments, I tried to stop it, I tried to…" the Gue'la trailed off, "It played us for fools you know? You and I, we were used like pawns in its sick little game."

Kais's eyes suddenly light up. The Enduring Blade was the name of the Imperial Cruiser infiltrated by demons over Dolumar IV. But, that was so long ago? "Who are you?" asked Kais once again, seething with anger in-between gritted teeth. The Gue'la looked at him appealingly, "Who am I?" he asked mockingly, "I'm what's left of Brother Librarian Delpheus of the Ultramarines Second Company. A shard of his mind… A mere fragment of who he once was."

"What!?" demanded Kais, "That's not possible!"

The Librarian laughed bitterly at himself and looked Kais right in the eye, "Tell me blue-skin… what is very last thing you remember about Dolumar IV?"

Kais felt his gut churn unexpectedly as his mind spun backwards towards those dark days when he was more naive and far less experienced. He remembered the war, boarding, capturing, and then fleeing the demonically possessed Imperial warship. He remembered destroying a Demon Titan Engine, of venturing into that dark fortress with Captain Ardias, and of fighting the demon Tarkh'ax. He remembered… he remembered…

"No," a simple shallow word spoken in a whisper from the Tau's thin lips. He remembered how the demon had picked him up with unnatural powers, and used Kais's fierce internal hated of his own father to burn a hole right into his soul. The Librarian smiled fondly and laughed bitterly once again, "So tell me blue-skin… how does it 'feel' being in the warp? How does it 'feel'… being possessed?"

Kais realized at that exact moment… that he was still on Dolumar IV.


	8. The Prisoner

The Light House suddenly trembled. Rockcrete dust fell from the bracing as the sound of grinding metal echoed through the structures subbasement from up above. Kais looked down at the enchained body of the Gue'la Astartes as he knelt upon his armored knees. There was something about this human which felt odd, or perhaps the problem was actually the situation the duo found themselves in.

"Release me!" ordered Brother Librarian Delpheus with a commanding voice while flexing his armored arms fruitlessly against his bindings.

The room started to darken and the sound of sundered structural bracing become more blatant. Something was tarring the light house apart from the rooftop down to the subbasement, and it wasn't being gentle. Through the hallways a ferocious wind started to pick up. Candles blew out around the chamber as Kais looked about with a growing sense of terror upon his face.

The darkness was making another desperate attack against him.

Once more the tower shook as if battered by a force of nature of manifested will. The walls started to run like candle wax as the golden aura around the Ultramarine Librarian started to dull.

"Release me now or we're both doomed!" ordered Delpheus once more.

Kais took one last look over the crumbling cavern and with a feeling of dread started to pry the chains loose from their moorings which kept the Gue'la imprisoned. There was a sudden gust of wind which wound through the chamber. It was cold and ominous, and spoke one word, "nooooooo."

With a little bit of effort and a well-placed solid shut from his Scattergun the first chain broke and crackled to the floor with blue electrical sparks dusting from the metal. The chamber trembled and this time the cold voice spoke louder, "NOOOO."

"Don't stop," said Brother Delpheus as a torrent of wind swept through the dungeon of the light house.

"That demon took my body and wore it to deceive my brothers. It has my soul imprisoned in this place within the warp, but it hasn't claimed you yet. You are still free. You still have free-will and a material body. Strip me of these binds, and hurry!"

Kais tore loose the last chain mooring and covered his eyes as the golden light of the Ultramarine Librarian pushed back an encroaching darkness within the halls of the Light Houses' subbasement. There was a terrible scream of pain from the eldritch demons' ghostly form as Delpheus stood from his knees and bore a gauntleted palm facing the terror of the warp.

"Feel my wraith!" he yelled. The golden light blew through the demon wisp and stopped the building from shaking and melting. What had once been a torrent of wind subsided into nothingness leaving Kais and the Ultramarine unharmed.

"What was that?" he asked the Gue'la.

The human turned to face him with the look of exhaustion upon his features. The golden light illuminating from the humans' body was depleted and somewhat dulled to a yellow glow.

"Tarkh'ax, or at least a piece of him," the Ultramarine considered the Tau briefly and then elaborated further, "Right now you are fighting a war within the very Warp for your soul. In the Materium, our universe, mere moments are passing while you wage this war. That thing seeks to imprison you so that the demon Tarkh'ax can lay claim to your body just like it did mine."

"I'm in the warp?" asked the Tau with bewilderment, "but that's impossible."

The Gue'la explained further, "Your soul is in the warp, or at least part of it is. Think of this place as a prison where the condemned have been isolated and are being hunted."

"Condemned?" asked Kais, "You mean there are others? Like in the city?"

The Ultramarine frowned sharply, "Yes and no. The city you are likely speaking of is a mental construct built within the warp from your mind. It's a representation of your inner-self trying to create an environment of order within the Warp itself. None of the people within this environment are real… as you and I would identify them as being real. They are… parts of you… which are fighting the demon."

"And yet there are… other survivors?" pressed Kais.

The Space Marine nodded, "Yes, other prisoners. They to are being held in this place, but they are in other illusions."

"Can they help us?" asked Kais. The Gue'la smiled a thin grim line upon his face. It did not appear remotely comforting even though it was meant to be.

"In theory, we could potentially navigate this place and enter the illusions of others. However, convincing them to join us might require some effort," he replied, "You must consider that they are being hunted as well and will be loath to trust anyone or anything due to their own experiences… let alone a Tau warrior."

Kais considered this but knew deep down in the inside that it was the only way to escape the horrors of the warp. He couldn't fight Tarkh'ax by himself and hope to prevail. He had only lasted this long through good fortune.

"There is one more thing," said the space marine while interrupting the Tau's train of thought.

He continued, "You have probably experienced some forms of mental corruption by now. Voices in your mind urging you to indulge in dark and sadistic pleasures."

Instantly there was a whisper at the back of Kais's mind, 'rip and tare.' The Tau fire warrior ignored it, but evidently the Ultramarine picked up on the voice because he snarled sharply. "That," he said, "was the voice of Khorne. You must not give in to him. Every time you indulge in the corrupting influences of these voices it weakens you against the demon Tarkh'ax."

"It helped me survive earlier," retorted Kais.

The Ultramarine quickly rebutted, "at a price, and the price is always high. Do not let these foul creatures control you. They seek only the smallest of purchase within your soul to which they can then spread like a cancer. Deny them even that and they will have to earn your mortal body through naked forced."

Kais nodded curtly and accepted the advice. In the real world mere seconds were passing as he and Karkh'ax fought in the warp for his mortal soul. If denying the advances of the Chaos gods could help the Tau warrior preserve himself then that was what he was going to do.

"Very well," he admitted, and then quickly decided on a further course of action, "and for now; we must seek aide from the other prisoners. How do we do that?"

Librarian Delpheus motioned down a darkened corridor where only the faint outlines of the walls and floor were visible. Kais raised a single eyebrow at the Gue'la from a lack of comprehension.

"We lose ourselves in this illusion. I'll then navigate us closer to one of the other prisoners."

Kais was skeptical and glowered sharply. Without explaining further, the Ultarmarine Librarian started to walk away with his armored feet thumping loudly against the rockcrete floor. The fire warrior reluctantly followed in the Gue'la's shadow with the yellow of his aura proving to be a guide.

"Close your eyes," ordered the space marine. Kais begrudgingly did as he was told and continued to listen to their feet clunking against the floor as they both continued to walk.

Within his imagination, Kais could feel the black eyes of his ghostly father looking at him from the shadows. Judging him. Inferior. Weak. To either side of the hallway were the mirrored images of his father, now a wraith, judging him. He spoke in whispers and nothing more.

…

Kais walked forward one step at a time. He heard the voices scratching at the edges of his sanity. His breath felt cold in his chest and the sweat ran down his irritated brow. Before him were the clunking footsteps of the Astartes Librarian.

"In this illusion your mind is your greatest weapon. When your eyes are closed and you have no means of reference to the real and unreal. Focus on yourself. See what you want to see inside your head. Do not open your eyes when you walk this path we now take for you will see only the raw madness of the warp."

Kais took the words to heart. He could hear and feel the wicked voices surrounding him. They moved like phantoms willing him unto the paths of moral decay. Rather than open his eyes to their reality he instead focused on the one within his own mind.

Before him was the rockcrete path illuminated in white. Beyond that there was nothing. There were no walls to the edges of the underground tunnel. There was only the golden ball of aura which represented Delpheus's soul. It hovered off the ground and moved forward before the Tau like a guide through the underworld.

"What do you see?" asked the golden orb. Kais kept his eyes closed, but within his mind emerged figures from the darkness. They shambled forward from a sea of shadows and fog. They were the undead cast in melting ink and hands outstretched to touch the fire warrior with willingness to consume him.

Kais turned and fired his Scattergun. In his mind and within the reality of the void the pellets from the scattergun hit something close by and there was a scream of horror within the immaterial. Blue blood ran down the fire warrior's ears and nose as he cocked the Scattergun and fired once again at another target.

Both undead exploded into black ashes and faded into nothingness. Together, Kais and Delpheus continued to walk the path of darkness with their eyes closed. The golden orb within the fire warriors mind led the way as another illusion formed within the mist.

"Failure," it spoke at Kais.

"Outcaste."

"Useless."

"Unworthy."

His father cursed him with those haunting empty eyes of the void. He stood always just out of reach and with a grim judgmental face.

"Ignore him," spoke Delpheus, "He tempts you from the path. Do not step away or you will be lost to the warp."

Kais ignored the ghost of his father and kept to the rockcrete illuminated within his mind. He followed the clanking footsteps of the Astartes represented as a yellow orb. Together they passed through the tunnel as it slowly started to fade away from all consuming darkness.

His guide now spoke.

…

"Listen to me, and listen well," said the space marine to the troubled Tau, "We are going to be separated soon. It is the way of the warp just like a pair of star ships sailing through the Immaterium. I will do my best to relocate you once in the other illusion. Do your best to survive in the…" there was silence and Kais only heard his own footsteps for the briefest of seconds clunking against a metal floor.

He opened his eyes with a moment of fright. Gone was the subbasement of the light house. It was replaced with a long metal corridor covered in red blood and ghostly mist. Kais quickly tensed his fingers against the grip to Terran issue Scattergun and looked down the sights. The transition between illusions had been totally without warning.

"Delpheus!" he yelled down the hallway. Kais quickly circled back around and noticed more gore and fog in the opposite direction. Still, the Ultramarine Librarian was nowhere to be found. Had he abandoned Kais? Had it been some sort of foul trick all along by another demon or worse?

The Fire Warrior didn't know.

"Deleheus!" he yelled once again while backing down the corridor with his raised Scattergun up against his shoulder. At a four-way junction in the metal hallway he stopped. Kais suddenly felt a gun barrel up against the side of his head. He looked to his left with beady eyes and saw another Gue'la.

It was a man with black hair and a fishnet scar over his right eye. Upon his head he wore the peaked cap of an Imperial Commissar. The drawn weapon up against the Tau warriors head was a bolt pistol.

"You sure don't look like a demon," said Commissar Holt Iverson, "But you are a Tau."


End file.
